U.S. federal agents nationwide bilked by brazen Ponzi scheme | | the narcosphere
U.S. federal agents nationwide bilked by brazen Ponzi scheme
Posted by Bill Conroy – July 25, 2010 at 9:16 pmLaw enforcement agencies actually paid crook to sponsor “seminars” used to hook his marks
Investment broker Kenneth Wayne McLeod was found dead, Vince Foster-style, inside his SUV in a park in southeast Jacksonville, Fla., on June 22.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to media reports. A rumor now popular among some federal law enforcement agents casts a bit of bitter irony over McLeod’s fate, indicating that he killed himself with a pistol given to him by the DEA to commemorate his years of service to the agency.
Whether that rumor has any basis in reality is not clear, but it speaks volumes about how some law enforcers feel about what McLeod did to a number of DEA agents, as well as dozens of other former and retired federal agents.
McLeod’s death came only some five days after he confessed to Securities and Exchange Commission investigators that he had been operating a 22-year-long Ponzi scheme that had victimized hundreds of government employees, primarily federal law enforcement agents.
The deceased, Wayne McLeod, was a smooth talker and a name dropper. He parlayed whatever contacts he had within the FBI, DEA and ICE into government-paid seminars at Quantico and Glynco, where he spoke to trainees about TSP, insurance options and other general financial planning issues. It doesn’t look like he scammed any of them, rather his game was to pitch clients to invest within upon retirement as he could supposedly provide a better, steadier investment alternative than the Thrift Savings Plan.