Federal authorities in Atlanta are set to announce the arrest of an alleged Ponzi scheme organizer who was captured overseas and deported back to the United States, where he was then taken into custody. The suspect's identity, along with details of the alleged scheme, had not been released as of Monday morning.
U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Seres are scheduled to hold a news conference at 2 p.m. Monday at the Richard B. Russell Federal Building on Ted Turner Drive Southwest in downtown Atlanta, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. Officials plan to provide additional information about the charges, the overseas capture, and the broader investigation, but as of the station's report, they had not disclosed the suspect's name or specifics of the alleged fraud.
The announcement will be provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, the same office that leads federal financial-crime prosecutions across 46 counties. Hertzberg was appointed to the post by federal district judges in September 2025 after serving as interim lead since that May, and he now oversees roughly 185 prosecutors and staff serving more than 7 million residents in northern Georgia.
A Pattern of Overseas Flight in Georgia Fraud Cases
The case fits a pattern federal and state investigators have flagged repeatedly in recent months: suspects who move victim funds abroad or flee overseas entirely to try to escape accountability. In February, Georgia's Securities Division issued an emergency order and a $1.5 million penalty against Atlanta pitchman Edward Zimbardi after finding he had fled the country while running what officials described as an international crypto Ponzi scheme, as Hoodline previously reported at the time.
Just weeks before Monday's planned announcement, a federal jury convicted Douglasville resident Babajide Adesayo on 18 counts of money laundering for routing nearly $3 million in stolen online scam proceeds to accounts in China, Hong Kong, and Nigeria, according to the Department of Justice. In that case, Hertzberg noted the overseas transfers were designed to make asset recovery all but impossible for victims.
Coming Off Georgia's Largest Ponzi Scheme Prosecution
The timing places the new case directly on the heels of one of the biggest white-collar prosecutions in state history. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson sentenced Drive Planning LLC CEO Todd Burkhalter to 20 years in federal prison and ordered more than $233 million in restitution for orchestrating what the FBI has called likely the largest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history — a $380 million operation that defrauded over 2,000 investors between 2020 and 2024 with promises of guaranteed returns on fake real estate loans, per the Department of Justice.
Two of Burkhalter's former co-executives were sentenced alongside him: former COO David Bradford received 51 months, and former CAO Julie Edwards received two years for money laundering, both tied to soliciting millions from investors for real estate funds that did not actually exist. Hoodline has followed the Drive Planning case since Burkhalter's guilty plea in January and the subsequent sale of his seized assets.
A Broader Enforcement Push Across Metro Atlanta
The Drive Planning case is not the only major fraud prosecution moving through the Northern District of Georgia this year. In April, prosecutors arraigned 68-year-old Edwin Brant Frost IV, former president of Newnan-based First Liberty Building & Loan LLC, on wire fraud charges, alleging he used new investor deposits to pay earlier investors while also covering personal expenses and political contributions.
The stakes for Georgia investors have been rising for years. Residents reported more than $152 million in investment fraud losses in 2024, with cryptocurrency schemes alone accounting for $132 million of that total, according to FBI data cited by 13WMAZ. A 2024 federal case in the same district resulted in a nearly eight-year sentence for a former investment advisor who ran a 13-year, $49 million Ponzi scheme that victimized more than 400 retirees and military veterans.
Aaron Seres, who has served as an FBI special agent since 2004, now leads the Financial Crimes and Money Laundering squad at the bureau's Atlanta Field Office, supervising task force investigations into complex investment fraud, corporate embezzlement, and international scams. Monday's news conference is expected to lay out how investigators tracked down the suspect abroad and secured his return to the United States, though officials have not yet detailed the mechanics of that overseas capture. Hoodline will update this story as more information becomes available following the announcement.
