CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The alleged mastermind of what the Mounties suspect is Canada's largest-ever Ponzi investment scheme has turned himself in to police in Calgary, police said.
Accompanied by a U.S. lawyer, Gary Sorenson, 66, returned to Calgary from an undisclosed location outside Canada Tuesday and was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the National Post reported Wednesday.
Sorenson was charged in absentia with theft and fraud exceeding $5,000 two weeks ago involving a case in which as many as 3,000 investors lost as much as $400 million beginning 1999, the Calgary Sun said.
The RCMP said in a statement the case "appears to be the largest Ponzi-type scheme" in Canadian history.
On Sept. 13, the co-accused in the Honduran gold mining investment system, 55-year-old Milowe Brost, was arrested in Calgary. Both he and Sorenson are scheduled to appear in court Oct. 19. Both are free on bond after surrendering their passports, the reports said.
Ponzi schemes involve the earliest investors receiving high returns and they in turn recruit new investors in an escalating pyramid of new money being used to pay the oldest investors and the operators of the scheme.
