Former state lawmaker and Georgia Board of Regents member Dean Alford has been ordered to pay nearly $10.8 million after about 100 investors say he ran a Ponzi scheme that defrauded them.
Alford resolved the matter through a negotiated settlement, one of his attorneys, Walter Jospin, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Thrash signed the order last week.
U.S. Securities and Exchange officials say Alford, who owned an energy company, sold promissory notes to investors — primarily Indian American professionals in the Columbus area — and guaranteed he would provide high annual rates of return. However, Alford’s company, Allied Energy Services, was struggling and he could not repay his investors. Alford used the money he raised to make interest payments to earlier investors and for personal expenses, such as building a multimillion-dollar home, the SEC said.
Investors say they were defrauded out of $23 million.
The SEC charged Alford in July with three counts of violating the federal Securities Act. State prosecutors charged Alford in October 2019 with fraud and other charges concerning similar allegations.
Jospin declined to comment further on the settlement.
Alford, who lives in Conyers, resigned from the Board of Regents, which oversees operational guidelines for Georgia’s public colleges and universities, in October 2019 shortly after the criminal charges emerged. He previously served 10 years as a state representative.
