Police Say Francis and Wife Laundered Money Through Ponzi Scheme
Posted
Jordan Fouts-
Much of the money former Warsaw Public Works Superintendent Lacy Francis received in a scheme to overbill the city for contract work was laundered through a Ponzi operation using friends, relatives and former city employees, investigating officers say. Francis was charged with multiple counts March 25 following a three-month investigation into alleged overbilling by ProForm Pipe Lining Co. over several years, amounting to $267,571. Of that, he received more than $100,000 from ProForm owner Marc Campbell, also charged in the scheme, according to a probable cause affidavit filed Tuesday with the Kosciusko County Prosecutor’s Office. Lacy Francis’s wife, Mildred, was arrested Tuesday and charged with six counts of money laundering following further investigation. Officers identify seven dates between Dec. 27, 2011, and April 11, 2012, when cashier’s checks totalling $78,820 were sent to Rex Venture Group LLC, a Lexington, N.C.-based company. Rex Venture was shut down Aug. 17, 2012, by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which says it was a $600 million Ponzi scheme. Investors were promised up to 50 percent of the company’s daily net profits through a profit-sharing system in which they accumulated reward points to use for cash payouts, according to the SEC. Officers charged Mildred Francis for involvement in six of those incidents, saying she “knowingly or intentionally conduct(ed), supervise(d) or facilitate(d) a transaction involving the proceeds of criminal activity,” according to the affidavit. After Lacy and Mildred Francis each sent a cashier’s check to Rex Venture Group, another six checks were sent by friends, relatives and at least one former Warsaw city employee. No charges have been filed at this time against any of those individuals, according to the prosecutor’s office. Mildred Francis admitted to officers that she controlled the money in all but two of those accounts, and that she thought it was the same $10,000 each time. She said she didn’t know where her husband was getting the money, but that it may have been from a marijuana grow operation he had invested in, indicating that she did know the money was illegally obtained, the affidavit states. By looking at three accounts owned by the Francises and a company registered in 2006 in Lacy Francis’s name, LFJ 7th Heaven LLC, investigators determined that it could not have been the same $10,000 each time because the money could not be withdrawn for 90 days after being submitted. When the money could be removed, Mildred Francis deposited it into one of the three accounts and moved it around in the accounts, the affidavit states.
