Many times our clients like to ask us, what kind of cases do you work on? What are the results you get? Well, here’s a case that, if you remember back a few years ago, we talked about this case in the state of New Jersey. There was a company called NRI, National Realty Investment Associates, and I’m sorry, investment advisors.

The Company’s Promotions
This company was advertising all over the place: Fox News, CNBC, CNN, ESPN. They were advertising all over the airwaves about this investment you could put money in and make a lot of profit.

Initial Investigation
We had some investors contact us that were skeptical about it. We did an investigation and we found that it was appearing to be a Ponzi scheme. In fact, one of their Executives had previous convictions for fraud. One of their investors had been admonished by the SEC allegedly for doing unregistered securities.

Concealed Histories
Another of their Executives actually changed the spelling of their last name so they couldn’t be identified as somebody who had a history. We wrote reports and gave all this to investors, and it kind of started a domino effect where investors who hadn’t put money in yet were pulling away from the company.

Domino Effect
Investors who put money in were starting to get scared, and they were filing reports with the Attorney General and the SEC. Our investigative case started a lot of this.

Outcome of the Case
Well, now, a few years later, the whole thing has blown up, and these people are now being sentenced. There was a conviction back earlier this year, and the Chief Executive is going to get 12 years in prison.

Restitution and Admission
The Chief Executive is going to have to pay back restitution. They stole $650 million. The whole thing was a Ponzi scheme, and he admitted it in court. This was a big case.

Misrepresentation of Properties
This was a company that represented that they were buying real estate all over the east coast of the United States—from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida. They had supposedly all these properties in Florida. We did some research on these properties too, and they weren’t exactly what they were represented to be.

Financial Analysis
We did financial investigations and analysis on these properties, and they weren’t investments—they were just properties that were just flat out there.

Importance of Due Diligence
Make sure you do your due diligence anytime somebody offers more than is reasonable. You know, if it’s too good to be true kind of thing. Make sure that you do investigations on the principles.

Findings on the Principles
That was the easiest thing on this. We did investigations on the principles of this company. We found one with a prior regulatory admonishment. We found one with a criminal history. We found one that was changing their name on their records for this new company.

Case Resolution
We like to see when these cases come to fruition. Sometimes it takes a while. This one took two and a half to three years to get to this point, but now the company’s been busted, the money’s been redistributed, people are going to prison, people have been convicted.

No More Victims
This is what we like to see so no more victims are at risk.