William Jackson Moates Jr.
An indictment unsealed Monday by federal prosecutors in Fort Smith accuses a former insurance agent of operating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than a dozen clients out of more than $2 million.
William Jackson Moates Jr., who operated Trilennium Financial Alliance in Fort Smith, was indicted last Wednesday, arrested Friday and released on a $5,000 bond on Monday.
One of Moates’ alleged victims was Fort Smith Physicians Alliance ACO LLC, an “accountable care organization” that is part of a federal effort to incent medical cost savings.
More: View the indictment here (PDF).
The 25-count indictment describes a classic Ponzi scheme in which Moates induced clients to give him money to invest “and instead diverted the investment funds to his personal use, to the use of the various businesses, and to pay back other investors.”
The indictment prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen does not indicate the total dollar amount of the scheme that Moates allegedly operated from May 2010 or earlier through January 2015. But the charges list victim clients identified by initial — L.L., K.G., C.L, etc. — and checks they sent to Moates ranging from $2,000 to $500,000 and totaling more than $2 million.
Mixed in with the charges of money laundering and scheming to defraud are individual charges of theft or embezzlement from an employee benefits plan, theft concerning a program receiving federal funds and bank fraud.
The employee benefit plan described as a victim of Moates’ scheme was that of a family-owned pool company in Ohio. The bank fraud charge is related to an account that Moates allegedly set up for the pool company by forging the signature of a company official.
The program receiving federal funds that Moates allegedly stole from was Fort Smith Physicians Alliance ACO. Moates, who was a licensed insurance agent until March 2015, was an agent for the ACO, and he allegedly transferred $200,000 out of its bank account in April 2013 and used $108,000 of that money to repay an investor identified as “D.G.”
Moates’ attorney, Rex W. Chronister of Fort Smith, was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
In March 2015, the Arkansas Insurance Department suspended and then revoked Moates’ insurance license because he failed to appear at an “investigative conference” at which he was supposed to bring the files of two unidentified clients.
In February 2013, Loren Janes of Fort Smith and his company, Janes Inc., filed a federal civil lawsuit against Moates and two companies he represented, Sun America Annuity & Life Assurance Co. and AIG Sun America Life. Janes alleged that Moates misused more than $240,000 of his company’s money that was supposed to be invested in Sun America annuities.
The federal case was ultimately dismissed, and Janes eventually settled with the Sun America entities in Sebastian County Circuit Court. In November 2015, he landed a $613,000 judgment against Moates in circuit court, which included interest and $300,000 in punitive damages.
Sign up for Daily E-news
