SANTA ANA \u2014 FBI agents Wednesday arrested a Yorba Linda couple on an indictment handed down in an alleged Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n
Linh Thuy Le, 59, and Trong Luu, 58, were arrested on charges of wire fraud and money laundering in a Sept. 17 indictment, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
The two founded and operated Inventis Ventures Holding Inc. in Tustin. The company \u201cwas marketed as a purported invite-only \u2018corporate capitalization loan program\u2019 promising a safe investment with a high rate of return,\u201d according to the indictment.<\/p>\n
Le served as Inventis CEO and Lu was the chief financial officer.<\/p>\n
The indictment alleges the scheme started in March 2022 and continued through early last year.<\/p>\n
The two are accused of wooing investors through \u201cword of mouth or referrals from existing inventors\u201d in a yearlong loan contract with a \u201chigh rate of interest, payable monthly,\u201d the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n
Le \u201cencouraged investors to make loans in cash,\u201d the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n
In exchange for at least a $5,000 loan, the two pledged to pay 15% interest monthly with repayment of the full principal at the end of the yearlong contract, the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlternatively, investors could choose an \u2018annual contract,\u2019 forego monthly interest payments, and instead receive a \u2018360%\u2019 return on the loan and repayment of principal at the end of 12 months,\u201d the indictment alleges. \u201cWhen the loan term expired, investors had the option to enter into a new loan agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The money was not invested as promised and was instead used to make interest payments to previous investors, pay business expenses and on the defendants, the indictment alleges. Some of the money was allegedly used to pay for two Yorba Linda mansions and a waterfront condominium in Huntington Beach, the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n
The two are accused of raising about $27.5 million from about 1,400 investors and pocketed about $7.4 million, the indictment alleges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA ANA \u2014 FBI agents Wednesday arrested a Yorba Linda couple on an indictment handed down in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,723,138,3130,100,611,7536,136,6917,7537],"class_list":{"0":"post-7376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","14":"tag-fraud","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-orange-county","17":"tag-ponzi-scheme","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-tustin","20":"tag-yorba-linda"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}