A former NFL player who was also a college football coach was charged Thursday with operating a bogus wholesale liquidation business that cost investors $80 million.
Ex-NFL player Jim Donnan, who coached University of Georgia football and was a TV commentator, defrauded investors with his partner Gregory Crabtree through a West Virginia company called GLC Limited, the SEC announced.
Donnan and Crabtree allegedly told investors that GLC could make a huge profit by buying up leftover merchandise from big-time retailers and then selling it to discount retailers. Investors were promised sky-high returns of up to 380 percent, the SEC said.
In reality, they allegedly used most of the money to pay earlier investors or use it for other illicit purposes.
“Donnan and Crabtree convinced investors to pour millions of dollars into a purportedly unique and profitable business with huge potential and little risk,” said William P. Hicks, Associate Director of the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office. “But they were merely pulling an old page out of the Ponzi scheme playbook, and the clock eventually ran out.”
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