Posted on 11/15/2004 5:51:29 AM PST by raccoonradio
Regulators are scrambling to determine how much money disgraced radio-station owner and self-anointed financial guru Brad Bleidt may have swiped to start his mini-media empire - and whether investors will ever get a dime back.
``We're going to do everything we can to recover the money,'' said (MA) Secretary of State William Galvin.
Bleidt, 50, allegedly tried to commit suicide last week after sending a tape to regulators on which he claimed he stole tens of millions of dollars from clients of his Boston-based financial management firm Allocation Plus Asset Management Corp.
By yesterday, regulators identified a handful of banks and money managers, including Fleet Bank (now Bank of America) and Fidelity Investments, which may hold some of Bleidt's assets.
Galvin said his office is exploring whether Bleidt had links to other financial firms he may have dealt with.
Firms Bleidt may have been registered with could be held liable for ``failure to supervise'' Bleidt and forced to repay millions of dollars that Bleidt has said he stole to buy radio station WBIX-AM (1060), Galvin said.
National Association of Securities Dealers records list Bleidt, registered with NASD, as being affiliated with one Boston brokerage firm and an insurance company.
Pete Michaels, a local securities attorney, said it's ``very, very difficult'' to say if investors will ever get their money back from what he said looks like a ``Ponzi-like'' scheme. Most firms' assets aren't insured for theft, he said, and the best hope for getting back funds would be to sue Bleidt and any firm affiliated with him.
``It's hard to say if we will get money back (for investors) if we don't know yet what the extent of the harm is,'' said Silvestre Fontes, senior trial counsel with the SEC in Boston.
A source close to the government probes said some of Bleidt's investors were already contacting lawyers about potential legal action to get their money back.
Bleidt, who bought the station in January and was in the process of selling it, was in serious condition yesterday, upgraded from critical, with a broken neck, a WBIX spokesman said.
The SEC's Fontes said since receiving the taped confession Friday morning, investigators have pored over documents in an effort to figure out how many accounts Bleidt had, how much money he managed, where the money went and how many victims he ripped off.
On the the Web page of Bleidt's other firm, Financial Perspectives Planning Services Inc., the company brags Bleidt built Allocation Plus' assets under management to $300 million in 2001 from $25 million in 1994.
The problem is that no one knows if Bleidt, who confessed on the tape that he was a ``monster'' and ``pathological,'' really ever had that much money under management - and, if he did, where it is, experts said.
Bleidt's assets have been frozen.
Bleidt said in his confession that he would prepare monthly statements to send to ``close to one hundred clients at least.'' He said his fraud was on the verge of being discovered when a large client, a Greek Orthodox church, wanted to redeem $1.5 million.
Galvin, whose office last week suspended Bleidt's license as an investment adviser, urged investors yesterday to step forward so investigators can begin to piece together who might have lost what
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