The estate of an alleged investment fraudster — who died in an apparent murder-suicide, along with his partners in a scheme that duped investors — has settled charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In mid-2023, the SEC filed charges in connection with an unregistered investment fund, Spartan Trading Company LLC, that it alleged defrauded investors after raising more than US$3.7 million from them between 2019 and 2023.
According to the SEC, the fund was founded by three men — Richard Myre, Dale Dahmen and Dahmen’s son, Dominick Dahmen — all of whom were found shot dead in a pickup truck in early 2023, in an incident described by local law enforcement as an apparent double murder-suicide that occurred as the scheme unravelled.
In its complaint, the SEC alleged that the fund misappropriated investors’ money rather than trading it as promised — and that investors were provided with false account statements that claimed the fund was profitable when, in fact, it was doing very little trading, and often losing money on the trades that were made.
The regulator’s initial complaint alleged that Myre and Spartan violated securities rules, and it named the estates of the Dahmens as relief defendants — but didn’t allege that they committed any direct securities violations.
Now, without admitting or denying the regulator’s allegations, Myre’s estate agreed to a final judgment that orders that the estate is jointly liable with Spartan Trading for disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from the scheme.
The judgment, which was filed in U.S. district court in Minnesota, along with an amended judgement against Spartan Trading, ordered more than US$1.3 million in disgorgement, with the estate jointly liable for up to US$695,000 of the total.
Previously, the SEC entered a default judgment against the Dale Dahmen estate that ordered it to pay almost US$700,000 in disgorgement and interest. The court also dismissed the complaint against the estate of Dominick Dahmen, at the SEC’s request.