A gaggle of Italian Site visitors Monsoon buyers fell for the outdated “pay your upline as an alternative of the corporate” MLM Ponzi ruse.
The upline was Fabiano Santos, aka Maurizio Longo, who directed his victims to take a position upwards of $1 million by means of his shell firm Promoting Corp.
Doubling down on his fraud, Santos filed investor claims with the Receivership on behalf of his downline.
Santos’ victims additionally filed claims, making a headache for the Receiver.
The issue with paying your upline to get into an MLM Ponzi scheme is the corporate has no report of funds invested.
The books and data of the Receivership Property present that Santos paid Site visitors Monsoon money in extra of $1.1 million.
Santos submitted a number of Proofs of Declare in opposition to the Receivership Property which had been Disputed Investor Claims.
Moreover, the Italian Buyers every well timed submitted Proofs of Declare in opposition to the Receivership Property based mostly on monies they paid to Santos. The Italian Investor Claims assert claims totaling $1,120,862.81.
Thus when a Receivership takes over a Ponzi scheme and items collectively data, they’re unable to confirm claims from in any other case reliable victims.
There aren’t any data exhibiting that the Italian Buyers paid Site visitors Monsoon any monies and thus the Italian Investor Claims are Disputed Investor Claims.
The Santos dispute was first raised again in early 2021. The Receiver and her workforce have been working to type by means of the mess since.
Santos’ claims had been ultimately “disallowed of their entirety”. The Receiver then decided
though there isn’t a report that the Italian Buyers paid money to Site visitors Monsoon, the Italian Investor Claims must be allowed as a result of they’ve adequately demonstrated that they’re the bona fide victims of the Site visitors Monsoon Ponzi scheme.
That brings us to the settlement reached between the Italian buyers and the Receiver.
As per the phrases of the proposed settlement:
- three duplicate/amended Italian investor claims might be withdrawn;
- the remaining claims might be transformed to USD and paid out as an accepted declare; and
- the settlement will resolve any excellent declare disputes between the buyers and the Receiver.
I don’t have an actual quantity however wanting on the submitted claims, the settlement seems to cowl twenty-seven Italian Site visitors Monsoon victims.
The disputed claims had been filed throughout March and April 2020 as a part of the Site visitors Monsoon Receivership claims course of. Collectively the claims complete $1.12 million.
The Receiver filed the proposed settlement with Italian buyers on September twelfth. At time of publication court docket approval stays pending.
In keeping with the Receiver, Fabiano Santos “is presently below felony investigation in Italy for fraud”. That was first disclosed in 2021 however there have been no updates since.
