Allegedly Used Investors’ Funds to Keep Other Business Afloat and to…

Allegedly Used Investors’ Funds to Keep Other Business Afloat and to Buy Vacations

OAKLAND – LAWFUEL – California Law News – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California charged William Frances (“Bill”) Reimers, 62, of Danville, with perpetrating an investment scheme in which Reimers allegedly accepted millions of dollars from investors but never invested the money.

According to the charges filed today, Reimers told potential investors various lies to get them to invest money with him. For example, Reimers allegedly told investors that he had developed a “regression analysis” program that could predict when mutual fund values would rise and fall; that investments were guaranteed to earn at least 9%; and that Reimers followed a conservative investment strategy through his investment company, Advisory Services Group (ASG). However, according to the charges, Reimers never invested the money his clients entrusted to him.

Instead, according to the charges, Reimers allegedly diverted investor funds to support two other businesses which Reimers controlled, Plan Compliance Group (PCG) and Univest Capital Management (UCM). Reimers was the President and majority owner of PCG and UCM. UCM handled third-party administration of insurance benefits for employees of federal government entities, and PCG handled third-party administration for 403(b) accounts of school employees. According to the information, Reimers used the money his ASG clients provided to him to invest to fund UCM and PCG. As UCM and PCG provided cash flow, Reimers used it to pay monthly dividends to his investment clients and to cash out clients who asked to close their accounts. By 2005, this alleged shell game had resulted in millions of dollars of losses, according to the charges.

Reimers is charged by a criminal information with six counts of mail fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341, and one count of money laundering, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(A)(i). The maximum statutory penalty for each count of mail fraud is 20 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, supervised release of three years, and restitution to victims of the alleged scheme. The maximum statutory penalty for the money laundering count is 20 years imprisonment, a fine of $500,000, and three years of supervised release. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

An information contains only allegations against an individual and, as with all defendants, Mr. Reimers must be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Doug Sprague is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Kathleen Glynn. The prosecution is the result of a 15-month investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.

Further Information:

A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.

Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.

All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay@usdoj.gov.

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