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2010 Investment Guide

Serial Scamster

Nathan Vardi, 11.24.09, 06:00 PM ESTForbes Magazine dated December 14, 2009

How ravenous are small investors for high yields? Justlook at the garbage Adley Abdulwahab managed to sellthem.

Armed officers from the U.S.Marshals Service swarmed into anelaborately decorated $1.5 millionhome in Spring, Tex. early oneSaturday morning in October.Inside they found AdleyAbdulwahab, 34, and his family.The Abdulwahabs were allowed togather a few personal belongings and then escorted out thedoor. The house was seized and became part of a tussle amonghundreds of victims desperate to recoup anything they can fromAbdulwahab's investment scams--ruses so brash and, inretrospect, so unbelievable as to raise doubts about the sanityof investors.Nearly 900 individuals across the nation are staring at lossesafter investing an estimated $120 million in entities connected toAbdulwahab. One of those is A&O Life Funds, a life settlementsoutfit that, after raising around $100 million from well-to-doinvestors by promising guaranteed returns of 12%, filed for bankruptcy protection in September.Abdulwahab's W Financial peddledsupposedly secured debtobligations to elderly investorsattracted by promises of highdividends. One is a blind93-year-old former schoolteacher.W Financial is now defunct.Abdulwahab took control of aTexas power company that, at itsdemise, forced thousands of residential customers to scramble for alternate electricitysuppliers.Abdulwahab is an American-born, dual U.S. and Egyptiancitizen who told investors he was a graduate of Louisiana StateUniversity--a claim for which the school says no record exists.Abdulwahab's work history is no better. He pleaded guilty in2004 to forgery in a money order scam foisted on NeimanMarcus, court records show. (He got off with probation.)"Abdulwahab shouldn't have been allowed to own a retailelectricity marketer, much less raise money from old people,"says Vernon Jones, W Financial's court-appointed receiver.

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