Ponzi Man Has a History, Investors Say

FORT WORTH (CN) - Investors say they lost $2.5 million to a Ponzi schemer who promised they would reap $17.2 million from a $1 million investment after just 3 years. When it didn't happen, the 51 plaintiffs say, Lee Goodman and his company, LG Investment Group, blamed it on "the economic conditions of the world."

The plaintiffs say Goodman failed to disclose that Texas government agencies had fined and sanctioned him repeatedly for a "lengthy stream of broken promises and shocking ethical and legal lapses ... unpaid bills and unfulfilled commitments in the wake of many monumental failures." These included "financial mismanagement," and a case in which Goodman and his partners "agreed to pay the state of Texas some $125,000 to settle a lawsuit involving allegations of sexual, physical and verbal abuse of patients at one of Goodman's 'skilled nursing centers,'" according to the complaint.

"Goodman did not reveal that in 1996, a Fort Worth jury awarded an administrator of one of Goodman's companies $1.1 million based upon allegations she made against Goodman that she was fired by Goodman after reporting that she saw a staff worker attempt to choke a resident at another of Goodman's 'nursing centers'.", the complaint states.

Goodman is listed as an agent for 49 Texas entities, but did not reveal that either, the complaint states.

The investors say that Goodman, of Hurst, Texas, sold them unregistered securities supposedly backed by real estate and natural gas drilling projects. The plaintiffs say he induced them to invest by claiming he worked with well-known lawyers and politicians in Fort Worth.

But in 2009, after at least one investor requested an early-out payment, Goodman stopped sending interest checks and has since refused to pay the plaintiffs their initial investments, blaming it on his ill health and the economic downturn, according to the complaint.

"Like the crooked Enron executives and the heartless Bernie Madoff before them, defendants act without regard to the well-being of those whom they have duped, and without regard to the lives that they have ruined; the retirements they have destroyed, the college educations for children and grandchildren which they have deprived their victims of, and of the unimaginable fear, tension, angst and despair that their actions have caused dozens of innocents," the complaint states.

The plaintiffs sued Goodman and LG Investment Group aka LG Investments Group. They want their money back ad damages for securities fraud, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. They are represented by Robert Myers.

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