William Conn Jr., a CPA in Sandy Springs, Georgia, was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday of helping to provide an air of legitimacy to a large Ponzi scheme orchestrated by John J. Woods, a broker and RIA formerly with both the New York-based financial services firm Oppenheimer & Company and the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Southport Capital.
In the complaint filed Thursday against Conn, the SEC charges the CPA of being the "public-facing manager" of Woods' Ponzi scheme. Woods and his fellow advisors at Southport Capital are accused of running the scheme through a fund they named Horizon III.
As a registered representative of an investment advisory and brokerage, Woods was prohibited by SEC rules from running Horizon III. The SEC said Woods enlisted Conn for that purpose, describing him in public documents for more than a decade as manager of the fund.
"In reality, Conn was the manager of Horizon III only on paper," according to the SEC's complaint. "He did not perform any of the duties typically handled by a fund manager."
The SEC separately alleges that Conn ran his own fund named Horizon I. Between 2008 and 2022, according to the complaint, he persuaded 21 of his clients to invest nearly $2 million in the fund.
The money was supposedly to be put into hedge funds. Instead, according to the SEC, Conn used it to support his accounting business, pay personal expenses and cover costs stemming from a failed real estate venture.
Attempts to reach Conn were unsuccessful.
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The Ponzi scheme has already led to two multimillion-dollar arbitration decisions against Oppenheimer. Last September, an arbitration panel administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the broker-dealer industry's self regulator, hit Oppenheimer with $36.7 million in damages and fines, in part to compensate eight alleged victims of the scheme.
Then in May, another FINRA panel
Woods is accused of continuing the scheme after he left Oppenheimer in 2016.
