Those uncommon investors who thought they profited from Minneapolis money manager Trevor Cook's Ponzi scheme may have another thing coming.
The court-appointed receiver rounding up the remaining assets from his imploded currency investment program won approval Tuesday for an expedited "clawback" process to reclaim any gains that it spun off.
The likely first target: Cook's wife, her parents, and a group of investors who were brought into the fund by her father, Clifford Berg of Apple Valley.
The Bergs received $948,848 from Cook, according to a report filed in May by receiver R.J. Zayed of Minneapolis. The receivership seized $746,650 of that, and Berg has already worked out an arrangement to repay the balance, according to recent court filings.
The receiver also is expected to look at more than $6.2 million that Cook transferred out of the program to pay Berg's investors early last summer as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission closed in on his operation.
Cook's wife, Gina, has relinquished ownership of her Apple Valley home, which has an outstanding mortgage of $388,933, and the receiver is evaluating whether to put it on the market.
Now, the receiver is likely to go after earnings she was paid on her own deposit in Cook's currency program. One receivership report noted that Gina Cook "more than doubled her 'investment' and received a return of $56,843.48 on top of the $55,575.52 that she put into the program."
It's unknown how many of Cook's 1,000 investors withdrew more than they put into the $190 million-plus scheme. A former employee of Cook's said Tuesday that she knew of a number of investors who got into the program early but cashed out with some gains in 2008 after growing suspicious.
The receiver will only go after the investors' so-called phantom profits unless it can be shown that the investor was an insider, in which case the principal may also be at stake.
Dan Browning • 612-673-4493
