by Björn Schöpe
September 5, 2013 – David Laurence Marion once owned the Minneapolis-based International Rarities Corp. The dealer sold investment coins and other products on a large scale via telemarketing. 2009 it was a some $24-million-a-year firm and believed to be the second largest firm in its field in Minneapolis. Now Marion is going to prison for five years, his firm went broke and he must refund his cheated clients $3.7 million.
As his attorney described it, the problems in Mr Marion’s life started when he anaesthetised pains at his knee with a powerful medicine, while becoming addicted to alcohol and gambling. All this cost money which he – and also some of his staff among which drunks, addicts and ex-cons – took from his clients. When the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection clients where told that their orders were being processed while actually the money, amounting to some $1.7 million, disappeared. Additionally Mr Marion told 26 clients their money was used to buy shares of a company which he claimed to be his firm’s parent company. This was not true, anyway, as well as Mr Marion did by no means expand his firm with this money as he had suggested.
However, having Marion confessed and a large sum to refund the judge suggested a sentence plainly below the maximum sentence. Over this fact some of the victims expressed their dissatisfaction.
You can read articles on that topic here …
… and here.
The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission litigation release is also available online.