A 50-count indictment was unsealed Friday charging Kalin Thanh Dao of Minneapolis with heading a fraudulent investment ring that bilked more than 200 investors around the country out of more than $10 million in what authorities described as a Ponzi scheme.
Dao, 32, was taken into custody after her first court appearance Friday. A detention hearing was set for Tuesday. Federal prosecutors argued before Magistrate Judge Susan Nelson that Dao was a risk to flee the state because of the charges here and other outstanding theft charges in Nevada.
Along with her father, Nghia Trong Dao, and mother, Thu Nguyet Le, Dao faces charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and filing false tax returns.
The Star Tribune reported in January last year that federal agents were investigating Dao and several other people suspected of running a fraudulent investment scheme that helped pay for stock market day trading and gambling trips to Las Vegas.
In a Ponzi scheme, new investors are recruited to help pay off earlier investors, who are usually promised high returns over a short period.
The indictment said that Dao and her cohorts solicited investors by promising returns of 20 to 2,200 percent over the course of one to 18 months. Investors were told that their money would go to various ventures, including stocks, gold, diamonds and oil commodities.
"Any money earned from day trading and collected by new investors would then be redistributed and sent out to all of the investors as lulling payments," U.S. Postal Inspector Rob Strande said in an affidavit earlier this year. The indictment said the funds were used for Dao's family's own purposes.
Dao represented herself as CEO of several Minneapolis companies with similar names, including TD Financial Services, NLC TD Financial Services, NLC Financial Services and NLC Venture Group, Strande said. (Several apparently unrelated businesses also operate under those or similar names but are not under suspicion.)
