Resident, who posed as a financial advisor, pleads guilty to a multi-million dollar fraud that targeted retirement accounts, robbing many of their life savings.
A multi-million dollar investment and PPP loan fraud, engineered by a Florida resident posing as an advisor, has led to a guilty plea in federal court.
Jared Dean Eakes, who presented himself as a financial professional but was not licensed or registered as an investment advisor, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and bank fraud after orchestrating a scheme that siphoned more than $2.7 million from investors and over $4.6 million in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
Court records show Eakes operated through a web of entities, including GraySail Capital LLP, GraySail Capital Management LLC, and Small World Capital. He targeted individuals seeking to roll over their retirement savings, promising to invest their assets in legitimate funds. Instead, Eakes rerouted their money into accounts he controlled, using forged documents and false promises. The funds were moved through banks such as SunTrust, JP Morgan Chase, and Ally Bank, often without the clients’ knowledge or consent.
Victims, many of whom transferred their IRA and 401(k) assets to Eakes for investment, saw their life savings vanish. According to federal investigators, Eakes repaid some clients with money stolen from others, creating the illusion of steady returns while masking the underlying fraud. The scheme unraveled after suspicious transactions triggered a federal probe, revealing a pattern of deception, forged signatures, and unauthorized transfers.
The government’s case details how Eakes used Small World Capital as a front, sending fake investment documents to custodians like Equity Trust Company. He then funneled the stolen funds into his own accounts, using the proceeds for personal expenses, travel, and to cover redemptions for earlier investors. In total, the wire fraud scheme netted $2,737,462.20 from at least nine victims, with individual losses ranging from $24,397 to over $1.1 million. --->READ MORE HERE
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Prosecutors say she forged lab reports and bank records to keep grant funding for her research after it was questioned. She says the state is charging a ‘fictitious person’ and colluding with her former attorneys.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a state-funded organization aimed at boosting biotech research in Maine gave a woman about $22,000 to work on a beauty supplement made from bison collagen.
But prosecutors say the Maine Technology Institute was scammed.
Linda Ellison was criminally charged in 2021, about a year after receiving the grant. She was ordered to appear in court last month for jury selection, ahead of her trial in early October.
She didn’t show up. Now, there is a warrant out for her arrest.
Ellison, who also uses the name Linda Edelin, was indicted in March 2021 on five counts of aggravated forgery and one count of theft — each is a Class B offense, carrying up to 10 years in prison. An attorney entered not guilty pleas on her behalf that June.
Prosecutors have accused her of stealing funding from the Maine Technology Institute by submitting several fake lab and banking documents to the institute, a publicly funded nonprofit created by the Legislature in 1999 to grow the state’s economy, in part by providing financing for science and tech-minded businesses. The state alleges she signed the documents using the names of real businesses and people.
Ellison, in an email to the Portland Press Herald, called the case against her a “civil contract dispute transformed into criminal prosecution” and said the institute demanded full repayment and rebuffed her request for a structured repayment plan.
The state has made a significant effort to prosecute Ellison — including taking a trip to Montana during a snowstorm to depose a witness — while the case has languished in Cumberland County Superior Court, which is still dealing with a backlog five years after having to pause and delay thousands of proceedings because of the COVID-19 pandemic. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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