Ponzi scheme architect asks court for $100,000 a month for living expenses from frozen assets

[cali]

The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal judge to deny a request to lift a hold on the assets of Ariel Quiros who was accused last month of defrauding hundreds of immigrant investors.

Federal regulators on April 12 froze all of Quiros’ assets when they filed allegations that the Miami businessman misappropriated $200 million out of $350 million in investor funds in “a Ponzi-like” scheme. The SEC says Quiros lied to hundreds of unsuspecting investors in the Jay Peak EB-5 projects and put $50 million into his own pocket.

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Gayles allowed the release of $41,000 last month.

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Now Quiros claims he needs $100,000 a month for “so-called reasonable living expenses.” In addition, Quiros is seeking $300,000 for professional expenses related to his court case.
Attorneys for the SEC say “Quiros wants to victimize investors again by stripping out millions of dollars from the Court’s asset freeze, so he can spend the funds before the Commission can use them to help compensate defrauded investors for the staggering losses created by Quiros and the other defendants.”

The SEC filing shows Quiros wants, for example, $8,904 a month to pay for his daughter’s expenses, $5,000 a month for his son, $5,056 for leases on luxury vehicles, $3,000 for storage of a military vehicle collection, $6,665 for expenses related to his luxury New York condo and $6,650 for personal assistants.

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http://vtdigger.org/2016/05/09/sec-quiros-wants-asset-freeze-lifted-to-pay-for-luxury-items/

[whistler162]

1. How much is a SRO and a

bus/subway pass?

SRO =Single Room Occupancy

[hobbit709]

2. Let's see here. $7.25/hr X 40 hrs X 4+ weeks = $1200

And even that would be overpaying him.

[cali]

3. And he's asking for money for his adult kids

[hobbit709]

4. He probably trained them well in grifting.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. You assume all grifters teach their kids to grift?

So old Ed Mezvinsky trained Chelsea Clinton's husband to be a grifter?

Hmmm, maybe you're on to something ...

[hobbit709]

8. Look at the Palins.

[cali]

9. Actually....

Quiros gave his son my dear old Burke Mountain to ruin.



Fortunately, between the receivership, Burke Academy which has trained more Olympic downhill skiing medalists than any other ski academy, and the community, that won't happen.

EAST BURKE - After 180 employees were fired at Q Burke ski resort on March 21 — 45 of whom were full-time workers whose loss could not be blamed on the seasonal nature of the ski business — Michael Sher had enough.

Sher immediately launched a Facebook page called "Friends of Burke Mountain," to vent his frustration with Q Burke ownership — the now infamous Ariel Quiros, who also owned Jay Peak Resort. Quiros' son, Ary, acted as CEO of Q Burke.

The elder Quiros is accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the biggest fraud in the history of the Northeast Kingdom. The SEC says Ariel Quiros diverted millions of dollars from foreign investors intended for projects at the resorts and in Newport to his own purposes, including buying a condo in New York and paying his personal income taxes.

Both Q Burke and Jay Peak, along with properties in Newport, have been turned over to a court-appointed "receiver," Michael Goldberg, the attorney who will decide the fate of the resorts with the approval of the federal judge in Miami, where the complaint against Quiros and his partner, Bill Stenger, was filed by the SEC.

"When I read of the loss of 180 jobs in the Northeast Kingdom, a place where you can't afford to lose jobs like that and people count on jobs so dearly, I thought, 'We've got to organize,'" Sher said.

The Northeast Kingdom is perennially the poorest part of Vermont, at the bottom in terms of jobs and income. Sher, a corporate lawyer in Brookline, Massachusetts, has been a season pass holder at Burke Mountain for the past dozen years. His children, Daniel, 23, and Lily, 19, grew up at Burke, he says. Burke means a lot to the 53-year-old Sher.

Within a day of being launched, Friends of Burke Mountain had 500 members, Sher said. The page is now up to more than 3,700 members, representing a wide variety of Burke lovers, including former employees, local residents and business owners, people who own condos or second homes in the area, and hundreds of other season pass holders."It has an incredible spirit and sense of community," Sher said. "It's like no other place, not just a ski area, but really a huge part of my life because of the friendships I've made there, and the opportunity to be close to nature, to ski in an uncrowded way and to do it among friends in an environment that is as far away from the huge corporate ski areas as possible."

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http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2016/05/01/we-burke-strong-say-supporters-burke-mtn/83663548/

[Logical]

5. Well, not a popular answer but innocent until proven guilty should mean something.....

the feds love to freeze assets also to prevent a viable defense.

[cali]

6. Guilty as.shit. I live here. 4 years ago many of us knew what was going on

Im not going to write animus here, but this has been horrifying and tragic particularly as Bill Stenger who brought Quiros into this, was a beloved and respected guy up here.


Here's a long NYT story about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/us/fraud-charges-mar-a-plan-to-aid-a-struggling-vermont-region.html?_r=0

And from vtdigger via the Brattleboro Reformer:
The Securities and Exchange Commission told a South Florida federal court judge Tuesday that Ariel Quiros has no business running two resorts in Vermont.

Properties seized by the federal government last month should remain in the hands of a court-appointed receiver, SEC attorneys said, in order to protect the interests of 700 immigrant investors from 74 countries who were defrauded by Quiros as part of a massive "Ponzi-like" scheme in the Northeast Kingdom.

At a two day "cause" hearing in Miami, SEC lawyers detailed how Jay Peak developers Quiros and his partner Bill Stenger systematically defrauded investors.

Federal regulators interviewed expert witnesses who explained that the two men padded project budgets and used elaborate bank transfers to cover up the misappropriation of $200 million in EB-5 immigrant investor funds. Quiros was additionally charged with using $50 million for personal expenses.

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http://www.reformer.com/latestnews/ci_29889121/sec-says-its-time-remedy-wrongs-at-jay