AWARENESS - Ponzi scheme involving more than R3 billion bankrupts entire families, affects over 2000 people

GUEST – Maya Fisher-French is a financial journalist and author at Maya on Money <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Earlier this month, an investment manager handed himself in at the Sandton police station, admitting to having run a large Ponzi scheme. As details came to light, the scheme seemed like a script worthy of infamous Wall Street scamster Bernie Madoff. <br /> <br /> Craig Warriner, who is currently in a Johannesburg prison, was a trustee of the BHI Trust, which invested funds on behalf of individuals. He managed the funds and claimed to have a trading strategy that delivered consistently high returns, irrespective of market conditions. <br /> <br /> While the full extent of the fraud has yet to be revealed and the figures verified, investors who are conducting their own investigations told City Press they believed it involved more than 2 000 clients and amounts of more than R3 billion. <br /> <br /> Many of these investors had placed their life’s savings in Warriner’s BHI Trust, including pensioners who rely on the fund for an income. Entire families have now lost their savings, after high-profile financial advisers placed significant amounts of their money into the scheme. <br /> <br /> As one investor told Maya Fisher-French, financial journalist and author at Maya on Money <a href="http://www.kayafm.co.za/">Kaya FM </a>