Police in Canada have claimed the masterminds of the Banners Broker advertising website, which netted 12,000 investors there, were operating a pyramid scheme which “evolved into a straight Ponzi scheme”.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has also claimed that Christopher George Smith, Rajiv Dixit, and “others known or unknown” possessed and laundered the proceeds of crime.
The Mounties have succeeded in freezing a number of accounts in Canada containing hundreds of thousands of dollars and linked to the Banners Broker scheme.
The officer who has led the investigation, Constable Kate Judd, said in an affidavit seeking the freezing of the accounts that the “suspects will or could soon be charged with the following offences”:
-Running a pyramid scheme;
-Fraud over US$5,000;
-Possession of property obtained by crime;
-Laundering the proceeds of crime;
-Making false and misleading representations.
“It is the position of the police that the Banners Broker operation was dishonest and that said dishonesty misled many investors, causing them to part with funds that, had they known the truth about Banners Broker, they would not have parted with,” said Judd.
“It is the position of investigators that this business was a pyramid scheme that, over time, evolved into a straight Ponzi scheme in which new victims were recruited to