Mounties have charged a Calgary man with defrauding 1,000 people of more than $164 million in what they’re calling a multi-faceted Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Craig Michael Thompson was sanctioned by the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) for the ploy and fined $8.8 million for penalties and costs in what was described as a $150 million scheme<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the RCMP announced they’ve charged the 49-year-old with fraud and laundering the proceeds of crime in an alleged swindle that targeted more than 1,000 investors between March 2020 and April 2024.<\/p>\n “While representing himself as a one-man investment firm, the accused received funds from Black Box investors on the understanding that he would use the money for day trading. Investors would then receive weekly email updates from the accused about the performance and growth of their respective accounts,” the RCMP Federal Policing Northwest Region’s Integrated Market Enforcement Team said in a press release.<\/p>\n Mounties alleged Thompson presented investors information he plagiarized from online sources and that he shifted more than $163 million to separate external accounts. One of those was his person trading account of a U.S.-based firm.<\/p>\n “The investigation also revealed that the accused was linked to several other invoice factoring and investment-related businesses: Intelsense Investment Corp., Invader Management Ltd., and Attebyte Investment Corp.,” said RCMP.<\/p>\n Thompson is set to appear in court on Thursday.<\/p>\n In its decision last year, the ASC called the operation one of the largest-ever Ponzi schemes in Alberta<\/a> and banned him permanently from trading.<\/p>\n It said he claimed to be using the funds for day trading but had instead transferred the money to pay other investors’ supposed returns.<\/p>\n