In a perverse case of life imitating art badly, a Viet woman has pleaded guilty to taking millions in investor money and gambling it all away in high-stake casino games, reports the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune here.
The government, however, apparently extracted guilty pleas from Kalin Dao, 32, by making threats against her parents. Dao’s plea statement made no mention of anything her parents did, and yet a guilty plea by her parents is part of the government’s conditions. There is no reported evidence of the role if any Dao’s parents played in the scheme.
The scheme itself is ridiculously simple – and troubling. “I know shady people” seems to be essentially what Dao said to get investors to pitch in up to $10 million.
Dao, from Minneapolis, is a short, 4’11″ woman who has been described as “bright and engaging.” She graduated from the local schools and went to the University of St. Thomas for 3 years.
When Dao was just 29 years old, she launched an investment company with a wide-ranging portfolio that includes securities, real estate, entertainment promotions and commodities. Originally named TD Financial, she was threatened with a trademark infrigement suit by TD Financial Banking Group (a legitimate financial group that owns, among others, the TD Waterhouse brokerage house). So she changed the name to NLC Venture Group. One selling point of Dao’s company was that her company had an exclusive software that helped it time its buy-and-sell.
Other selling points, however, are that the company’s contacts in Asia made it privy to inside information, and that it had special relationships with Las Vegas casinos, which provided other investment opportunities.
Dao’s company claimed investment returns could be as high as 2,200 percent over a year and a half. In reality, she was using some of the later investors’ money to pay the earlier investors.
Mostly, Dao (pictured) used the money to finance her lavish gambling trips to Vegas. Sometimes she even asked investors to wire money to her there, using her “special relationships” with the casinos as an excuse.
There is no report of the role her parents played in the scheme, if any. Nonetheless, her parents are also charged, and they too are going to plead guilty at a separate hearing next month. If the parents don’t plead as expected, Dao’s plea agreement will fall apart as well.
Dao pleaded to two out of the 45 counts in the indictment. The conspiracy charge puts the monetary value of her scheme between $2.5 million and $7 million, though investigators have alleged in sworn statements filed in the case that she bilked investors out of as much as $10 million.
Not to belittle the fraud Kalin Dao perpetrated, but the thought is crossing the Bolsavik’s mind that if you’re putting money in a fund that boasts of relationships with shady characters that pass along inside information, maybe it’s karma that a shady character should take your money.
The cartoon on top is by one of the Bolsavik’s favorites, two-time Pullitzer prize winner David Horsey, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was published in 2002, in the midst of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.
Intelligence misapplied!
What intelligence?
Logically speaking, a person who is able to convince other people to pitch in millions of dollars should possess some intelligence.
Why did the prosecutors also make it part of their plea bargain that her parents plead guilty also? The only logical explanation I can think of is that Dao transferred most of the assets to her parents prior to this Madoff (formerly Ponzi) scheme unraveling.
I heard that she used to spend $2000/ meal in Las Vegas w/ her friends and spend $600 for a fish meal alone.( special fish that imported from Hong Kong).
Kalin Dao is small fish. Read the linka at below about Trinh Hiep & Mitch Ngo.
They took more than 50 millions form the rich people in Little Saigon. This case in the California court system now:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8422783/BBC-News-Re-Hiep-Trinh-Mitch-Ngo
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14424978/OC-Register-Newspaper-article-about-Hiep-Trinh-Mitch-Ngo-Tony-Vanetik
http://www.corp.ca.gov/ENF/pdf/2009/Turan_dr.pdf
http://www.turanpetroleum.com/includes/pages.php?p=397
For more info: go to Google.com search for: Trinh Hiep and Mitch Ngo
Gambling habits learned from parents can cost daughter a long jail time.
SAD!
$10 million isn’t small fish.
especially compared to $50 million.
both situations are sad and unfortunate.
Small world, i went to middle school with this woman. Back in the mid to late 90s, she and her family had a travel agency where people trusted her to purchase tickets to vietnam and all the visa services. However, she would come up with excuses when people demand to have their tickets ready for the trip. She always pulled the last-minute thing…
I didn’t know she upgraded her game to this kind of ponzi scheme…
Wow! Bad habits need to be fixed at young age.
Who says we do not have Vietnamese Madoff. They must all graduated from the same school.
Ms. Nguyen,
Does she speak fluent English or fobby English? LOL. Not that it matters but I’m just wondering. I would never trust someone who frequent casino more than couple bucks, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands dollars.
From the moment the doctor slaps your ass to bring you to life, the warning sign for men is life keeps slapping your ass when you are in the company of women.
For many men, the term “Women’s lib” brings back memories of such avant garde action as bra burning – the symbolic act was meant as a critique of the beauty culture of valuing women for their looks instead of their whole self — which was easily trivialized, since getting women out of their bras had been one of men’s goal for years.
Women often complain that men don’t fight fair, so claiming to be feminists, when it suits them and when it’s convenient, is a way they can fight not fair back. The term “feminism” becomes a catchall for manipulating men through feminine wiles behind the scenes or just busting nuts.
Nowadays, there’s been a change of tactics.
The new thinking is “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition”. Now, just as vicious and aggressive as men, women are fighting for a chance to be on top, and, boy, that really turns me on.
When it comes to cutthroat, the debate over who’s worse – men or women – may be the toughest call.
Viet men have made history. It’s about time, history is herstory too !!!
congratulations to you , Vu . You website made it to USA today
Scantily-clad baristas give economic jolt to coffee shops
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-06-02-vietcoffee_N.htm?csp=34
Congratulations, Mr Vu, you are a national man now! The next time, make sure they spell your name Hao-Nhien correctly.
$80 million Ponzi scheme targeting Korean-American :
Peter C. Son of Danville and Jin K. Chung of Los Altos ran SNC Asset Management and SNC Investments, with offices in Pleasanton and New York. The SEC said the companies raised millions of dollars from investors in the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea with promises of returns of up to 36 percent for investments in foreign currency trading.
The two companies sought investments through advertisements in Korean-language newspapers. The money of some investors was used to make payments to other investors, in Ponzi-scheme fashion, according to the SEC’s civil suit. As the scheme collapsed last year, authorities allege, the two men “drained” the companies’ accounts of millions of dollars, including transfers to overseas bank accounts.
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_12555286
INVESTORS BEWARE OF FLORIDA PONZI SCAMMERS!!!! Recent articles state that “FMC Telecom is adding SMS to the company fold”. This is nothing but MORE name-dropping and empty technology dribble to form ANOTHER “shell” holding company for Florida Ponzi schemer Ed Berkhof. Who does he think he is? Allen Stanford? Florida Ponzi schemer, Ed Berkhof and fellow Ponzi schemer, Sidney D. “Trip” Camper used name dropping, donations to St. Jude’s, stamped passports, and falsified tax documents to gain trust and get private investors to hand over thousands of dollars in cash, company paid trips to England, and ultimately control of their company. Ed berkhof is NOT a president or COO of anything – Ed Berkhof is a third rate bass player looking to bully another victim into giving him money so he can pay his creditors = PONZI. Google “SEC Trip Camper Elandia resignation letter” . FMC Telecom founder Frank Cassidy is either a NEW partner in crime for Ed Berkhof OR he is simply ANOTHER victim fallen prey to Ed Berkhof’s web of lies and empty promises to “take a company public”. The FBI has nabbed Allen Stanford and is now looking for the rest of Allen Stanford’s den of investment scammers like Sidney “Trip” Camper and Edward Berkhof. Don’t let this happen to you.
Contract should be grouped with retract, intractable, traction, and other words that share its root. ,
This site I found has lots of great info on herbal teas and was really helpful. Its really difficult to find good info
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