If It’s Too Good To Be True, It Might be a Ponzi Scheme

If a respected member of your community offered you an investment opportunity, you might consider it. Especially if it’s a man of the cloth.

For nearly a decade, Martin Sigillito—a bishop in the American Anglican Convocation and a St. Louis attorney—convinced 200-plus people to do more than just consider it: they actually entrusted him with their money to invest in a financial venture. But this venture turned out to be an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme, and in April of this year, Sigillito was convicted of leading a conspiracy that swindled $52 million from victim investors.

How the scam began. In late 2000, Sigillito opened a law office but didn’t actually practice law—instead, he advertised his “international business consulting services.” One of the “services” he offered was participation in the British Lending Program (BLP), transformed by Sigillito into a Ponzi scheme. Through the BLP, investors could “loan” money to a real estate developer in the United Kingdom for short periods of time, mostly one year, at high rates of return—between 10 and 48 percent.

This real estate developer, according to Sigillito, had a knack for spotting undervalued properties he could flip for a profit, had options on land that would become valuable when re-zoned, and had inside connections with British authorities. It sounded like a win-win for investors.

Unfortunately, this British developer was not the wunderkind Sigillito made him out to be—he was just another link in the criminal conspiracy.

How did Sigillito convince his investors to part with their money? He exploited his personal ties to people and particular groups he was affiliated with—like his church, social clubs, professional acquaintances, family, and neighbors—in a technique known as affinity fraud. He also held himself up as an expert in international law and finance and claimed he was a lecturer at Oxford University in England (when in reality he had simply taken part in a summer legal program at Oxford).

Sigillito, who also conspired with another American attorney, insisted that his investors’ funds initially be placed into his trust account, from which he would take exorbitant fees for himself and his co-conspirators. Even though he told investors he would then transmit the money to the U.K., Sigillito actually kept most of the funds in one or more American bank accounts he controlled.

For a while, the scam was self-sustaining: Many investors let their interest payments accrue and rolled their loans over every year, plus Sigillito brought in enough new investors to make interest and principal payments to any previous investor who asked for payment. And all the while, he made enough in “fees” to support his affluent lifestyle: exclusive club memberships, expensive vacations, a country home, a chauffeur, private school for his kids, and collections of rare and antique books, maps, prints, coins, jewelry, and liquor.

How the scam ended. Eventually, an increasing number of investors meant increasing payout requirements, which resulted in the BLP making late interest payments or missing interest payments all together. Then investors began clamoring to withdraw their funds. And finally, Sigillito’s own assistant became suspicious of his activities and contacted the FBI.

The takeaway from this case? Fully investigate any investment opportunity before handing over your hard-earned money.

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Chicago Mob Attacks and Crime Hurting Tourism?

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office swung into full damage-control mode Wednesday after Chicago’s convention and tourism chief was quoted as saying that a 38 percent spike in the city’s homicide rate and a troubling return to mob attacks downtown was hurting efforts to promote the city.

Don Welsh, president and CEO of Choose Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board that he’s gotten five or six calls from meeting planners in recent weeks concerned about whether Chicago is still a safe place to hold their meetings.

So far, nobody’s cancelling any meetings just yet. But, that’s a possibility if the Chicago Police Department does not get a quick handle on the problem, Welsh was quoted as saying.“We hope this sunsets quickly because all the good work we’re doing regionally, nationally and internationally, if this is not contained in a reasonable period of time, it will have an impact,” the Tribune’s website quoted Welsh as saying.“There are inquiries that are coming in from meeting planners that are saying, ‘Hey, I’m reading about what’s taken place in your city. Is your city safe?’”

In a follow-up interview with the Chicago Sun-Times a short time later Wednesday, Welsh insisted that his remarks had been “misinterpreted” and “taken out of context.”

He acknowledged that Choose Chicago has gotten “five or six calls over the last five or six weeks” from skittish meeting planners who had read or heard about Chicago’s surging homicide rate and about mob attacks in the downtown area.But, Welsh said, he has an answer for those inquiries.“They’re asking if these issues are taking place in the downtown area or near McCormick Place and the answer we’ve given them is an emphatic, ‘No,’” Welsh said.

“There has never been a second thought about how we position Chicago as the safest big city in the world. The only issue we’ve run into is this isolated gang activity that the mayor has been aggressively dealing with. [Overall] crime continues to be down. The shootings we have seen have been almost 100 percent isolated to neighborhoods outside the downtown core of Chicago where tourists and visitors from around the world frequent.”

Reminded that there was a shooting right off Michigan Avenue that police attributed to “gang-related road rage,” Welsh said, “An isolated incident could take place in any city in the world. But crime is down and continues to be down.”

Apparently concerned that his earlier remarks might land him in Emanuel’s doghouse, Welsh then talked about all of the “positive trends” he has seen lately in the drive to meet the mayor’s ambitious goal of attracting 10 million more visitors by 2020.“We just wrapped up what is probably the best June in the history of the city. We’ve announced the retention of over $3 billion in convention business. Last week alone, we opened international sales offices in Brazil and Japan,” he said.“All the metrics we look at — from hotel occupancy to bookings and editorial support domestically and internationally — are all up with positive information about our city. … Chicago is an incredibly safe and clean city that’s got any amenity that visitors, convention and leisure visitors want. The hallmark of the city has always been clean, safe streets and that had not changed.”

Emanuel’s communications director Sarah Hamilton said Welsh’s earlier claim that crime and the perception of it is hurting tourism is “simply false.”

“More and more people are coming to Chicago. Our visitors rates are up and hotel occupancy was over 90 percent last month,” Hamilton wrote, “one of the most outstanding months the city has had in recent history.”

The occupancy rate in June was 91.8 percent, up from 87.7 percent last year, even though the average daily rate per room, nearly $224 was up 1.9 percent compared to last year.“We expect the numbers to get better and better,” she said.And she noted that despite the spike in homicides, “overall crime” is down 10 percent across the city.

McPier CEO Jim Reilly was asked whether he shares Welsh’s view about Chicago’s crime problem and the impact it could have on conventions and tourism.“It certainly isn’t helping, but I don’t know that I would say it’s killing us,” Reilly said.“Part of it is reality. Part of it is the way the story sometimes gets played. But, I don’t know that I would go as far as Don. It’s clearly not helping. That’s what I would say.”

Reilly said he has not gotten any calls from convention and trade show planners concerned about whether it’s safe to come to Chicago.“In terms of our job conventions and trade shows — I don’t think it’s had much impact. Choose Chicago is the sales arm. He deals with tourists. We don’t. We aren’t directly getting any calls. If there are calls, they’d be going to Choose Chicago — not us,” Reilly said.

“The concern is that the perception would be that it’s not safe. I don’t know that it has thus far been a huge issue. But with the coverage, it has the potential to be that. To the extent there is a problem in terms of tourism, it is a perception problem. Clearly, there is a reality behind it and the mayor and the superintendent are working on that.”

Earlier this year, Emanuel merged Chicago’s two major tourism organizations to free up $1.3 million to market Chicago nationwide and overseas and set a goal of attracting 10 million more visitors by 2020.

At the mayor’s behest, the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau joined forces with the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture. The new organization is now run by Welsh.

Choose Chicago subsequently opened international sales offices in Brazil, Germany and Japan bringing the city’s international sales efforts to eight offices on four continents.

Even with the expansion, Chicago spends the “least of any major U.S. city” on international marketing, officials said. Las Vegas has 22 overseas offices. New York (18), Los Angeles (15) and San Francisco (13) also run circles around Chicago.

As a result, Chicago claimed just 4.3 percent of the 27 million overseas travelers to the U.S. in 2010, compared to 32 percent for New York.

“We’re the third largest city in America and we’re 10th on foreign tourists. … And I do not believe that the best kept secret of America should be the city of Chicago,” the mayor told the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau at the time.

“We’ve consolidated three offices here in the city that deal with the tourism and convention business and we’re gonna open three offices around the world where the tourists exists. It doesn’t take a lot of geniuses to do that, but it took years of study to come up with that conclusion.”

Chicago currently attracts 40 million annual visitors, but only 1.2 million of them come from overseas.

Emanuel’s goal is to raise it to 50 million visitors by 2020 and to move into the top five cities for international tourists. Chicago currently ranks tenth among U.S. cities.

A 25 percent increase could raise visitor spending by $3.6 billion-a-year and boost annual tax revenue by up to $300 million.

“We have lagged in the tourism business. And it shows..”

Thanks to Fran Spielman

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Tribal Warfare on the Streets of Chicago

Chicago is in the grips of a deadly gang war. At least 275 people have been killed in the city so far this year and many more have been shot, many of them innocent bystanders to the gang violence. Among the latest victims were 12- and 13-year-old girls shot Tuesday night. They survived.

Sgt. Matt Little leads one of the teams in Chicago's Gang Enforcement Unit. There are about 200 such officers in the city-- versus 100,000 gang members. "Almost all the violence we're seeing now is from the gangs," Little said. "When there's a shooting we'll respond to the shooting. We'll figure out where we believe the most likely area for retaliation is and we'll work that area trying to both prevent retaliation and possibly build a case on offenders."

CBS News rode along with Little's team as dusk fell on poor neighborhoods of vacant lots and high anxiety.

"The gangs have lost their hierarchy, so to speak, and without a chain of command, there's really nobody keeping things in check," Little said. The leaders are mostly in prison -- or dead. Those left are young, reckless, and often terrible shots. "Instead of a bullet with somebody's name on it, we have a bullet that reads 'To whom it may concern,'" Little said. The result is a spate of shootings that have killed or wounded young children, even toddlers.

The victims include 7-year old Heaven Sutton, shot to death selling candy outside her house. Ten-year old Kitanna Peterson, was playing by a fire hydrant when she was shot last week. A stray bullet went through her wrist and abdomen.

"We care about the grandmother that lives in the Graystone who's raising her grandkids. We care about the guy who's a hard-working stiff who gets up in the morning and works two jobs," Little said.

The police are also establishing a data base gleaned from interviews with the gang members themselves -- on their whereabouts, grudges or habits -- to anticipate trouble before it erupts. Some businesses that serve as hideouts will also be shuttered.

Little responds to a man with a gun call. In just two hours, we witnessed repeated stops, searches and arrests. "They are smart enough and savvy enough to have people run interference, to have plausible stories, to have a whole system of things they can bring up to try to interfere with us doing our jobs," Little said. "They know we're out there and that has an effect on what they're willing to do."

He sees the same people "all the time."

Sgt. Little is a decorated veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that parts of Chicago are comparable to what he saw in combat. It's "tribal warfare," he said, "and as it continues to build unless we manage to interdict it, and manage to stop it long enough for the blood to stop boiling, the heat to die down."

Thanks to Dean Reynolds.

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Inland Bank and Trust Branch Robbed

The Inland Bank and Trust branch located at 539 South Spring Road, Elmhurst, was robbed at approximately 10:22 a.m. yesterday. The robber, who is believed to be the person who robbed the same bank on June 11, 2012, as well as a Chase Bank branch in Bensenville on April 2, 2012, approached a teller and presented a note demanding cash. The note implied that the robber had a gun, but no weapon was displayed during the robbery. After receiving an undisclosed amount of cash, the robber left the bank on foot. No injuries were reported in connection with the robbery.

Witnesses described the robber as a Hispanic or white male, 5’9” to 6’0” tall, with a medium build. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that was black on the front and had a gray pattern on the back; khaki shorts; sneakers; and sunglasses.

Photos and additional information, if available, will be added to the posting related to the April 2 robbery at www.bandittrackerchicago.com.

Anyone with information regarding this bank robbery is asked to call the Chicago Office of the FBI at 312-421-6700 or the Elmhurst Police Department.

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The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

Celebrated historian David Nasaw brings to life the story of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, in this, the first and only biography based on unrestricted and exclusive access to the Joseph P. Kennedy papers.

Joseph Patrick Kennedy—whose life spanned the First World War, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Cold War—was the patriarch of America’s greatest political dynasty. The father of President John F. Kennedy and senators Robert and Edward Kennedy, “Joe” Kennedy was an indomitable and elusive figure whose dreams of advancement for his nine children were matched only by his extraordinary personal ambition and shrewd financial skills. Trained as a banker, Kennedy was also a Hollywood mogul, a stock exchange savant, a shipyard manager, the founding chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and ambassador to London during the Battle of Britain. Though his incredible life encompasses the very heart of the American century, Joseph Kennedy has remained shrouded in rumor and prejudice for decades.

Drawing on never-before-published material from archives on three continents, David Nasaw—the renowned biographer of Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst—unearths a man far more complicated than the popular portrait. Was Kennedy an appeaser and isolationist, an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, a stock swindler, a bootlegger, and a colleague of mobsters? Did he push his second son into politics and then buy his elections for him? Why did he have his daughter Rosemary lobotomized? Why did he oppose the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and American assistance to the French in Vietnam? What was his relationship to J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI? How did he influence his son’s politics and policies in the White House? In this groundbreaking biography Nasaw ignores the tired old answers surrounding Kennedy, starting from scratch to discover the truth behind this misunderstood man.

Though far from a saint, Joseph Kennedy in many ways exemplifies the best in American political, economic, and social life. His rags-to-riches story is one of exclusion and quiet discrimination overcome by entrepreneurship, ingenuity, and unshakable endurance. Kennedy’s story deserves to be told in full, with no holds barred, and Nasaw’s magnificent The Patriarch is the first book to do so.

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