| Smith pleads guilty in U.S. in OLINT Ponzi scheme | | Print | |
| Written by Richard Green/richard@fptci.com | |||
| Tuesday, 29 March 2011 12:53 | |||
 David Smith pleaded guilty today (March 29) to 18 counts in U.S. District Court in connection with a Ponzi scheme that cheated investors out of more than $220 million. The charges included four counts of wire fraud, a count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and 18 counts of money laundering. Smith, a Jamaican who was living in the Turks and Caicos Islands, will be sentenced after a presentence report is prepared for the judge. Prosecutors will recommend that he get a lower sentence because of his cooperation. Smith was serving a 6 1/2-year sentence in Her Majesty’s Prison on Grand Turk after pleading guilty in September to four of more than a dozen charges against him. In exchange, theft charges were dropped against his wife. After being indicted in U.S. court in Orlando in August, Smith willingly went to the United States to face the charges in November. Smith was operating his Overseas Locket International Corporation (OLINT) in Jamaica until the government there shut him down in 2006, when he moved to the TCI. He claimed to be trading clients’ money for foreign currency, touting large returns. According to U.S. charges, Smith promised clients returns on investments of 5-10 percent monthly with only 20 percent of their investment ever being at risk. But Smith never traded in foreign currency, instead making false account statements and paying clients “returns” with their own money. Smith is accused of transferring millions of dollars from the TCI to I-Trade FX, a company in Lake Mary, Fla., in which Smith was the majority investor. In addition to the criminal charges, the U.S. government is seeking to seize $128 million that Smith handled through allegedly fraudulent wire transfers to U.S. banks. The TCI attorney general’s office is continuing confiscation and compensation proceedings and investigations to protect his victims’ investments Olint TCFX Limited and TCI FX Traders Limited, which collapsed in 2008. OLINT reportedly had $6 million of investors’ money tied up in TCI Bank Ltd., which was closed in April and recently ordered to be liquidated. Click HERE to read Smith's plea agreement.
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