A website has been launched in support of Doug Vaughan’s Ponzi scheme investors who have been hit with clawback lawsuits by the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy case of his now-defunct residential real estate brokerage.
“First we were victimized by Doug Vaughan (Vaughan Company Realtors) and his Ponzi scheme fraud. That was bad enough …” says the home page of www.vaughanvictims.com. “But now we are being victimized yet again.”
The website was put together by several investors fighting clawbacks, which are civil lawsuits to force the return of a payment or payments made in connection with Vaughan’s long-running scam. The basic message is a call to investors to join forces to fight “this terrible injustice.”
“The purpose is informational for other clawback victims who have already been sued as well as those who have no idea they are about to be sued,” website spokesman, investor and Wyoming resident Ronald Frank told the Journal.
“By educating the public on what is happening to us, who is unfairly targeting us and what we are doing to defend ourselves, we hope to protect what little we have left against these claims,” he said.
The website invites investors targeted by clawbacks to tap into legal representation by Helen Davis Chaitman, a New York City lawyer who has figured prominently in clawback litigation surrounding the bankruptcy liquidation of notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff’s firm.
A Ponzi scheme is an investment swindle in which money put up by later investors is used to pay fake profits to earlier investors. The schemes are typically promoted as legitimate investments – real estate was the basis of Vaughan’s scam – but little or no real business takes place.
Clawbacks are a common, controversial follow-up to bankruptcies involving fraud. The money obtained by clawbacks pays legal fees and compensates victims of the fraud.
An out-of-state resident who never met Vaughan, Frank cites his own scenario as an illustration of a clawback hitting an innocent victim. Court documents show he lost a net $37,000 in the Ponzi scheme but has been hit by a clawback seeking as much as $46,548 from him.
He said the clawback “is intrinsically unfair and without merit. We just don’t understand why we are being targeted.”
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