A broker who raised more than $13 million from American and European investors to be placed into analleged multi-million Ponzi fraud centered around a Bahamas-registered company has been ordered by a US judge to pay penalties worth a combined $1.852 million, The Tribune can reveal.
A release from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US capital markets regulator, yesterday said Judge James Michael, sitting in the US District Court in the Western District of Virginia, had entered a final default judgement against Brigit Mechlenburg, who had allegedly marketed a “massive international Ponzi scheme… that raised more than $70 million” through Vavasseur Corporation, a Bahamian company.
The judgement requires Mechlenburg, who fled the US with her assets shortly after the alleged Vavasseur fraud was uncovered, to pay disgorgement of $1.61 million, $123,000 in prejudgement interest and a $120,000 civil penalty.
Source: The Tribune
