Skip to main content

You are here

Advertisement

Spell ‘Check’? Radio Host Advisor Found Guilty in Ponzi Scheme 

Apparently neither rain, nor snow – nor voodoo spells – can thwart an SEC investigation.

At least they didn’t in the case involving advisor and radio host Dawn J. Bennett, 56, of Chevy Chase, MD, who was found guilty on 17 federal charges yesterday after a federal jury deliberated for less than five hours.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, testimony at trial indicated that over the course of the scheme, Bennett obtained more than $20 million from 46 investors, many of them elderly clients who knew of Bennett from a radio show she hosted. Some of those funds were used to pay earlier investors – the rest for Bennett’s personal benefit, including $8,000 beauty treatments, two penthouses in the tony D.C. suburb of Chevy Chase, a $500,000 box suite at Dallas Cowboys Stadium, astrological gems and cosmetic medical procedures.

But what might have been the oddest expenditure was the money used to pay a website operator to arrange for priests in India to perform religious ceremonies to ward off federal investigators. She is said to have filled her freezer with jars labeled with the initials of Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers and “spells” involving beef tongue – in hopes of silencing the tongues of authorities.

Bennett faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for wire fraud conspiracy and for each of nine counts of wire fraud, a maximum of five years in prison for securities fraud conspiracy, a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of four counts of securities fraud, and a maximum of 30 years in prison each for bank fraud and for false statements on a loan application.

Advertisement