A federal grand jury in Ohio indicted the owner of a Cleveland wealth management and financial advisory firm on charges of embezzling his employees’ retirement contributions and operating Ponzi and mortgage fraud schemes to obtain more than $1.2 million.
According to the indictment filed on October 1 by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Ohio, 54-year-old Seku Shabazz, formerly known as Jason Brooks, the president and CEO of Great Lakes Retirement Planning LLC, stole money from his employees’ 401(k) retirement saving plan contributions and withheld employer matching contributions from January 2020 through May 2022. He allegedly used approximately $38,000 of the retirement funds for his own benefit, including paying for memberships at a yacht club and private social club.
Prosecutors say once Shabazz spent the retirement savings, he ran a Ponzi scheme in which he recruited people to invest in a mortgage-backed investment vehicle, the funds for which he then spent on himself and at times used for payments to earlier investors and creditors…