Joseph Francis Bartholomew is charged with 30 felony counts related to his alleged operation of an $11 million Ponzi scheme. The 75-year-old former licensed insurance agent has been called Orange County, Ca.’s Bernard Madoff, after the financier who ran a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scam for decades. Bartholomew allegedly bilked over 27 investors.
According to the California State Department of Insurance, he used his insurance business, MBP Insurance Services, to get people to trust him. Those involved reportedly included a number of family trusts, a church, an ex-baseball player, and senior citizens.
The Orange County Register said that Bartholomew made false promises to investors telling them that they could earn fast returns of up to 40%. For example, he is accused of offering one investor an unsecured investment while making the claim that the customer would get $10,000 a month if he invested $500,000. Bartholomew allegedly gave fraudulent assurances that the investment on third party life insurance policies was a legitimate one. He also made other misrepresentations, including claiming that over the last decade there had been no problems getting payments to investors.
Bartholomew had stopped paying investors by March 2013.
He is accused of running his financial scam from 2005 into 2014. If convicted, he faces up to 40 years behind bars.
Also charged for her alleged involvement in Bartholomew’s Ponzi scam is insurance agent Wendy King-Jackson. She worked at MBP Insurance Services.
King-Jackson is accused of selling unsecured securities connected to bogus insurance policies. She allegedly told clients that the policies were legitimate and the investments were legal while falling to notify them that the California Department of Corporations did not give the insurer the authority to sell the securities. She faces up to 16 years maximum in state prison if convicted.
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