Sirk’s daughter saw the fraud as bringing unnecessary pain to the final months of her father’s life. “You cannot understand what this scam did to him, the pressure it put on him,” said Kimberly Sirk Holland, shortly after she tearfully watched a key player in the scam escorted from a Virginia federal courtroom on his way to prison.
The investigation of that nationwide scheme — which resulted in seven convictions — was the first tackled by a Virginia Financial and Securities Fraud Task Force set up by federal prosecutors last year. Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said he believes the task force will allow his prosecutors to tackle more large fraud schemes at a critical time.
In a tough economy, MacBride says, people are even more susceptible and vulnerable to financial scams. And as law enforcement faces tightening budgets, prosecutors say, the task force helps to marshal resources.
“This will allow us to increase the volume and complexity of such cases,” MacBride said.
The task force consists of federal law enforcement agents and federal and state regulators, including members of the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Because a federal hiring freeze has not permitted MacBride to replace prosecutors who have left for other jobs — in Northern Virginia, he has nine prosecutors, down from 15, who focus on fraud — he has lawyers on loan from the Justice Department’s criminal division.
Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, said he supported the task force in Virginia because it gets “different groups talking to each other” and helps keep them focused on financial crimes. He and other prosecutors said it has already produced results. Last month, for instance, a 46-year-old Michigan man admitted in Alexandria’s federal court to stealing $40 million from 750 members of his investment club.
Federal prosecutors say the recently concluded investigation into the life insurance scam provides a blueprint for other task force cases.
It began with a tip
Like many other investigations, this one began with a tip — to Virginia regulators in 2008 about a smooth-talking con artist named Tomme Bromseth, 69, who was selling the fraudulent investments to people in Virginia. Soon, federal investigators learned that Bromseth was targeting retirees with a slick pitch about a guaranteed investment in life insurance settlements for his Houston-based firm, A&O Resource Management.
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