The Securities and Exchange Commission filed an emergency action and charged a former Morgan Stanley broker with defrauding clients and misappropriating millions of dollars of investor funds as part of a Ponzi scheme.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, the SEC charged Shawn Good, 55, of Wilmington, North Carolina, with raising at least $4.8 million from five of his clients at Morgan Stanley to make supposedly low-risk investments in tax-free bonds and land-development projects.
"Good's Ponzi scheme ensnared at least five investment advisory clients with limited investment knowledge and who relied on Good's investment recommendations, including a single mother of two young children who depended upon the assets to pay living expenses, a divorced and retired violin teacher, and other retirees," according to the complaint.
Instead of investing their money, the complaint alleges that Good used new investor funds to repay prior victims of his Ponzi scheme and to pay for his own personal expenses, including luxury cars, international travel and about $800,000 in credit card bills. In 2020 and 2021, Good used at least $1.6 million of new investments to repay other investors in the scheme, the complaint alleges.
About $13,000 of clients' funds went towards Good's Tesla Model 3 since July 2020, while $23,000 was spent on his Alfa Romeo Stelvio since September 2020 and $800,000 was spent on paying his credit card bills since January 2017, according to the complaint.
Another $110,000 was allegedly spent on Venmo payments to others, with memo lines such as "because youre sexy" (sic), "tattoo," "Hotel for Destiny," "Nailz" and "shopping," the complaint alleges.
"Good appears to have returned about $2.8 million of victims' funds (some of which included purported profits on fictitious investments), but secretly relied heavily on Ponzi victims' investments to make the repayments," according to the complaint.
All of the transactions involved in the scheme were financed outside of Morgan Stanley and, in most cases, the clients transferred funds from their accounts at the wirehouse to their individual bank accounts before sending the funds to an account controlled by Good, according to the complaint.
