SEC Charges Former Georgia State Legislator With Defrauding Investors in Ponzi Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged former Georgia state legislator and former member of the Georgia Board of Regents Clarence Dean Alford with defrauding at least 100 investors in his now-bankrupt energy development company, Allied Energy Services LLC. According to the SEC’s complaint, from 2017 to 2019, Alford fraudulently raised at least $23 million by selling promissory notes to investors – primarily Indian-American professionals – that he guaranteed would provide high annual rates of return. According to the complaint, Alford presented Allied as a successful business when in fact it was struggling, and claimed that investors’ funds would finance energy projects while using most of the funds to make interest payments to earlier investors and for personal expenses, including building a multimillion-dollar home.