Two men from Lubbock, Joshua Allen and Michael Cox, stepped into the courtroom for their first appearance following an indictment that charged them along with San Antonio's Brooklynn Chandler Willy for an alleged role in a Ponzi fraud scheme. According to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, the indictment, which was handed down last Wednesday, accuses the trio of using four investment companies to defraud hundreds, leading to multi-million dollar losses.
The details of the indictment reveal that Allen and Cox's companies, Ferrum Capital and its iterations, alongside Willy's Chandler Capital Holdings and Queen B Advisory, also known as Texas Financial Advisory (TFA), were supposedly offering asset management and financial planning services. These services, however, are now tainted by allegations that they used them to conceal high commissions and lie about investment security. The claim is that they managed to simultaneously cover their tracks and draw in new victims to sustain the fraudulent scheme, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
All three, Allen, Cox, and Willy, face charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud. If convicted on all charges, they could be looking at up to 70 years behind bars. It's a potential lifetime locked away, pending the judgment of a federal court judge who will take into consideration the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines along with other statutory factors in determining their fate, as stated by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
At their first court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad, the defendants did not enter any pleas, and their future remains unclear. The indictment claims the Lubbock men and Willy hid the truth to unfairly profit from investors’ losses.The FBI and IRS-CI worked together on the investigation that led to these charges. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joe Blackwell and Kelly Stephenson are leading the case, which now moves into the court process, as per the U.S. Attorney's Office.
