NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Lawyers for a Brooklyn man accused of running a $40 million Ponzi scheme said what looks like their client's written confession is not what it seems.
Along with thousands of documents turned over to prosecutors is a memo the accused Ponzi scheme operator Philip Barry wrote to himself that declares, "I'm just a crook running a Ponzi scheme," The New York Daily News reported Tuesday.
The memo goes on to say, "The only $ I have comes from new investors."
A classic Ponzi scheme works by having new investor money serve to pay something back to the more established investors so they will vouch for the investment or at least not demand their money back.
Barry also wrote, "You said all you cared about now is your family and your family's money, wouldn't it be better than if I obtained a tiny percentage of (the new investors') assets to replace yours and your family's investments."
But instead of a memo that prosecutors might interpret as a confession, attorneys Lisa Hoyes and Michael Weil in a court document wrote, "Mr. Barry swears … that he created the document to gather his thoughts and to prepare himself for conversations with disgruntled investors."
"It may mean no more than that he took investors' criticisms to heart or is an introspective person willing to look at himself critically," the lawyers wrote in a court filing asking the memo be barred from the trial.
The memo carries "significant risk that the jury will wrongly construe Mr. Barry's statement as some kind of confession," the lawyers wrote.
Barry is currently free on $500,000 bail, the newspaper said.
