My family has been caught up in Texas' second-biggest investment fraud. Now, my little is sister -- a first year teacher, and one of the Fraud's victims is up against a lawsuit.
I don't know how to help her or what to expect.
As shown in these linked news stories, press releases and blogs, (here,here,and here), a Texas "futures investor" named Derrich Pollock bilked about 100 mostly Evangelical church members out of upwards of $7 million over the course of several years. My father was close friends with Mr. Pollock. I don’t go to church.
My mother died when I was 6, due to a broken traffic light at a busy intersection. A suit against the state resulted in the establishment of individual annuities to be released to my sisters and me when we reached college-age. When I received my final payout, I was down on my luck at 21. A past girlfriend had tracked me down to tell me that I had a 1-year old son. My wife left me. I was forced to drop out of school to work as many jobs as I could handle. Fearing I’d never amount to anything, I put half the money into a savings account and used the rest to pay my remaining debts.
My father repeatedly encouraged me to invest my money with his friend Derrich, claiming that he had received a minimum of 15% return every year. I resisted, feeling that generally what is too good to be true is too bad to show its face. But as my sisters began receiving the payments from their annuities, they invested with Mr. Pollock, and were able to afford to finish their degrees with relatively little struggle. Seeing this, and feeling a sharp pang of jealousy, I finally gave in and gave Derrich my final settlement monies.
Within a week, Derrich sent me an impressively detailed spreadsheet. My initials sat in Column 60 of the System5 report – 60 among about 100 others. I have saved every spreadsheet he ever sent me. The last one shows a net fund value of just under $20 million.
Derrich was always willing to cut payout checks to investors requesting them. I used "profits" as downpayment on a car.
When Derrich’s plane crashed in Sugar Land, and the whole thing unraveled, I just happened to be visiting Texas. My father cried for hours. He had recently retired, secure in the knowledge that his investment with Derrich had matured to an adequate sum. As details filtered in, it became obvious that the whole thing had been a scam. My father’s money was, more or less, already gone.
And the money that represented my mother’s legacy – poof. Ugly, ugly proceedings followed in short order. Since I had never "withdrawn" more than the net value of my initial deposit, I eventually was given a "made-whole" amount, with a small additional percentage. Ironically, since the crash, this scam turned out to be the best investment of my life. My IRA was a bloodbath.
Things have not fared as well for my sister. She is a first-year teacher in a small town in Texas. Lawyers working for Derrich’s widow have determined that there is more money to squeeze from this reeking shit-stew. Since my sister withdrew from her "funds" to pay down on her student loans, she "benefitted" more than the actual cash amount she "deposited." Now, these lawyers are suing her for $35,000, saying that those monies belong to the estate, or should be used to pay the legal costs accrued by the estate.
I’m sure we all know that no first-year teacher could ever pay such a sum. Granted, my sister paid for school with monies that were essentially not "real." However, no one in their right mind would claim that the victim of a fraudulent investor should be made to pay, in any way, for the use of assets they had no means of knowing were stolen.
My sister is asking me to write a letter to the editor of her local newspapers in order to shed some publicity on this case. It has been largely kept hush-hush, because of the churches and church leaders involved. But the lawyers are taking advantage of this silence by shamelessly pursuing the Scammer’s victims.
If any of you have any advice for me, please please please comment here, or email me at whatisdan@hotmail.com. Thank you.