Two Alberta men have been charged with fraud after allegedly running a Ponzi-type scheme that raised more than $100 million from investors around the world.

RCMP arrested one man on Sunday and are still looking for a Calgary man who is believed to be in Honduras.

Milowe Allen Brost, 55, is charged with fraud over $5,000 and theft over $5,000. Gary Allen Sorensen, 66, faces the same charges but is missing.

Police said the two men created a business, Syndicated Gold Depository S.A., then formed an agreement to lend money to Merendon Mining Corporation Ltd. with a promise of a high rate of return.

The pair is accused of defruading 3,000 people in Canada, the United States and overseas out of $100 million between 1999 and 2008.

Lured by the promise of returns, investors were then enticed into offshore shell companies marketed by Brost’s firms Capital Alternatives Inc. and Institute for Financial Learning Group of Companies Inc., said the RCMP.

The charges come after an investigation that spanned more than three years. The Alberta Securities Commission alerted the RCMP about the Ponzi scheme in 2007.

The Alberta Securities Commission has already sanctioned Brost.

In 2007, the commission ordered a lifetime market ban and fined Brost $650,000 for fraud.

IE