A former investor with David Ross, who was responsible for the single biggest individual fraud in New Zealand, says the decision to declare Ross bankrupt could help find any hidden assets. [Read more…]
Hamish McIntosh – Ross Asset Management investor – ordered to repay $454K
Hamish McIntosh: Is a Wellington lawyer who was an investor in one of New Zealand’s biggest Ponzi schemes . who has been ordered to pay back the fictitious profits he withdrew.
McIntosh, who lost his appeal for name suppression was an investor in Ross Asset Management (RAM) and was being pursued for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “clawback” claim by liquidators.
McIntosh withdrew $954,000 from RAM’s Ponzi-style scheme before it collapsed.
In March the court heard the investor borrowed $500,000 from Westpac to invest with RAM in April 2007 and was paid out $954,000 in November 2011.
In a judgment issued on Tuesday Justice Alan MacKenzie ordered McIntosh to pay to the liquidators $454,047.62. However, he did not have to pay the liquidator his $500,000 investment.
Liquidator John Fisk said he believed the judge had made a fair and balanced assessment . [Read more…]
Ponzis square pegs in insolvency law’s round holes
“It is about time New Zealand law caught up with the slippery slope – and beneficiaries – of ponzi schemes”
“OF ALL the great minds in the world, few can outperform the mind of a Member of Parliament in devising reasons why something cannot be done …. [as illustrated by] Commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith, who has produced an impeccably inactive response to the plight of ponzi scheme victims of fraudster David Ross.”
Dominion Post Opinon Piece (21/01/15) by “Chalkie” – Fairfax Business bureau deputy editor Tim Hunter
Full article xsee: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/65245344/ponzis-square-pegs-in-insolvency-laws-round-holes
Note:
David Robert Gilmour Ross, Wellington financier and former head of the Ross Asset Management Ltd (RAM) [In Liquidation from 17/12/12], was sentenced at the Wellington District Court in 2013 to 10 years 10 months’ jail.
David Ross – convicted fraudster: loses jail term appeal
David Ross, the man behind the single biggest fraud in New Zealand’s history, has lost his bid to have his “unreasonably crushing” minimum jail term reduced.
In November Ross, 64, was jailed for 10 years and 10 months for operating a fraudulent scheme in which private investors lost about $115 million.
His company, Ross Asset Management, fleeced at least 700 investors through portfolios in which they thought they had more than $380m.
For full story see: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/10199187/David-Ross-loses-jail-term-appeal
David Ross, convicted fraudster, has $725,000 house waiting for him outside prison
Today a front page Dominion Post report has called into question an appeal submission by jailed fraudster David Ross‘s lawyer, Gary Turkington, against his client’s sentence of a minimum parole period of five years five months as being “unreasonably crushing” and “manifestly excessive”. Turkington, presenting his case to three Court Judges [see note. 1], questioning the point of such a lengthy minimum term imposed by District Court Judge Denys Barry at Ross’s sentencing on 15 November 2013, for a man in his “twilight years”, and Ross, 64, dwelling without hope in prison. “He’ll emerge with nothing”, he said, as he sought a minimum non-parole period of four years.
The Dompost report has highlighted the fact that Ross’s wife, Jillian Elizabeth Ross, who was jointly indebted with him to Ross Asset Management Ltd (RAM) for $3.49 m, when the company collapsed, has recently bought a four-bedroom two bathroom Lower Hutt home with her brother for $725,00, after she pocketed nearly $900,000 from the sale of the family’s former $2.2m mansion at 105 Woburn Rd, Lower Hutt. [Read more…]