Matthew Piercey Back in 2020, FBI agents waited out a suspect
in a $35 million Ponzi scheme, Matthew Piercey, while he hid in California’s Lake Shasta.
The accused faced a mountain of charges, including 31 felony counts, when he was finally brought
in.
The action began in the relatively calm city of Redding, in northern California.
The scammer led authorities on a vehicle chase through the streets of Redding.
The action picked up speed and started to get reckless.
While still on busy local streets, Piercey ran off the road twice with his pursuers in
tow.
The chase didn’t begin and end in Redding; Piercey made a bold play for Interstate 5
and headed north.
The chase eventually reached Lake Shasta when the determined man hopped out of his truck.
He grabbed something from the vehicle, a point in police chases that usually doesn’t end
well.
The object turned out to be a Yamaha 350Li underwater scooter.
Rather than making that cliched last stand, it seemed the scammer was ready to try a legitimate
career in scuba diving.
Piercey swam into the massive artificial canal, where he stayed for 25 minutes, using the
scooter to go further and faster than any human swimmer.
What's even crazier is this all happened in the winter.
Temperatures for that area typically hovered in the area of 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
He might have lasted longer if it wasn't so cold.
But it wouldn’t have mattered; cops had a helicopter positioned above the lake to
see the crazy escape play out.
When the chilled culprit finally crawled out, feds nabbed him straight away.
Before taking him downtown, they were nice enough to give him a dry change of clothes
provided by his wife.
They even had their medical team give him a once-over to ensure he was okay before throwing
the book at him.
The dust in Piercey's case has yet to settle as of 2022, but official records speculate
that he may get a life sentence.
Family Wealth Legacy Piercey ran the scam that got him chased into
Lake Shasta through two different shell companies, each with its own function and clientele.
The two companies, of course, had several things in common.
The most prominent items on that list were that they centered on wealth management and
that the money they were supposed to be investing and growing went directly into Piercey’s
pockets.
One of the two companies was known as Family Wealth Legacy, and its intended purpose is
what it says on the tin.
The company targeted those who were already wealthy but looking to get richer to give
future family members a head start.
This is actually a pretty tame premise for wealth management and investment firms, but
Piercey and his associates put a somewhat different spin on things.
With a $50,000 minimum investment in the mix, the bold and risky play paid off... until
it didn’t.
The other company was the more contemporary Zolla.
This everyman’s investment firm didn’t target any particular audience or boast a
lofty minimum like Family Wealth Legacy.
Instead, the firm branched into several investment channels, such as loans and real estate.
There wasn’t really a target audience in mind; common folk were targeted just as gleefully
as banks and even the Federal government.
Their joint PR efforts were the biggest uniting factor in how the two companies were run.
Both were said to use an AI-based trading system for moving investments around.
Termed the “Upvesting Fund,” this tool was supposed to use an algorithm that examined
Wall Street patterns to get guaranteed returns.
For about five years, this lie would be the primary vehicle driving Piercey’s scams.
While Zolla and Family Wealth Legacy were the stars of the show, a third company came
into play late in the game.
In 2019, long after he had discovered that he was being investigated, Piercey used false
credentials to start a third shell company.
On paper, this company was some sort of medical outfit operating out of Redding.
In reality, it was a front for laundering funds from the other two businesses.
Between those three companies, Piercey pulled down some $35 million from 2015 to 2020, when
he was finally brought to justice.
The scam also crossed state lines, and he started at his family’s law firm in Illinois,
where Family Wealth Legacy was founded.
The feds eventually slapped the company with an order to cease operations, but it seemed
that order went ignored.
Additionally, Family Wealth Management and all of its various branches all held Delaware
business licenses, regardless of where they operated.
The answer to how Piercey and his people made $35 million appear from thin air is actually
quite simple.
They started by getting in some initial investments, lying to their investors, and using early
money to pay them back.
They ran a textbook Ponzi scheme.
But, like every Ponzi scheme, the money eventually dries up.
It’s definitely worth noting that Piercey couldn’t always keep up the facade.
On many occasions, investors let him know they’d had enough, and he almost always
had a clever response.
Many victims believed their money was tied up and that reporting the company would violate
their signed contract.
These all came back to bite Piercey as extra charges for witness tampering.
The money that disappeared off the top went to a wide range of personal affairs.
Piercey bought two houses and paid off some credit cards.
He also used the money to cover operational expenses for the two major shell companies.
Naturally, this included paying “dividends” and “withdrawals” to customers.
One of the more curious items was $1,195 spent on a Yamaha model 350Li sea scooter.
The Sea Scooter Many people don’t think about single-man
underwater propulsion systems very often.
They’re usually relegated to fictional curiosities, like the gadget in the PlayStation game Ape
Escape.
They are, however, an authentic category of hardware.
In that market, Yamaha has a strong position with multiple models.
One of those, sitting near the top of the heap, is the 350Li that was used in this crazy
escape.
Its nearly $1,200 price tag puts the 350Li firmly in the top end of the market.
In fact, many top picks from reliable publications come in at around half that price.
That money gets you a scooter that can move up to 4 miles per hour in water and run for
about 75 minutes on a single charge.
Compared to contemporaries in the field, this one is definitely head and shoulders above
the rest.
Even so, it wasn’t enough to help Piercey.
The Feds reported that Piercey entered Lake Shasta and stayed there for about 25 minutes.
There were multiple instances where authorities couldn’t make visual contact with Piercey
and had to track him by the bubbles rising from the water.
No details were provided as to how he may have been breathing underwater if that was
the case at all.
One source says that a well-trained person could hold their breath without special preparations
for about 11 minutes at a stretch.
Bear in mind that the average person can barely surpass a minute; this feat requires serious
training and conditioning.
Genetics also plays a role, as does preparation.
After inhaling pure oxygen, a Spanish diver once stayed down for just over 24 minutes.
Even assuming that Piercey was a stellar swimmer with a talent for holding his breath, or had
some breathing equipment with him, his chances of making it across were slim.
Lake Shasta is roughly 35 miles on its longest side.
At the pace of the Yamaha machine, he would have taken some nine hours to cross.
By then, his scooter's battery would be dead, and the police could have driven around to
the other side.
And don't forget about hypothermia.
Investigation Sometime in 2018, Piercey found out that he
was under investigation.
Any honest business owner would have gathered any evidence of legitimacy they had and come
forward.
Piercey...
well, Piercey did the exact opposite.
Keeping transparency to a minimum was the standard for Piercey, and that didn’t change
when he came under scrutiny.
In fact, he got even bolder.
He sent out a letter to then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, championing
Zolla as the troubled banking industry’s salvation.
He even tried to get investors to join in.
While this was all before the devastation that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought on the
global economy, the United States wasn’t exactly breaking fiscal records that year.
Wall Street was a cautiously optimistic place around that time, so Piercey’s proposed
plan probably wouldn’t have gone over too well.
Not that trying to scam the entire United States government is a better plan.
He would later point to this letter as the reason subpoenas were going out to staff and
investors, hiding the real focus of the investigation.
Bethel Church The book of Proverbs in the King James Bible
says, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
This Biblical saying became apparent in Piercey’s dealings with the infamous Bethel Church,
a megachurch out of Redding.
It’s a wealthy church with over 11,000 mostly wealthy members.
The twist here is that they believe very strongly that God still does miracles these days, and
that’s what Piercey used to get into the congregation’s wallets.
As a church member, Piercey had some influence on the inside.
He began injecting Judeo-Christian platitudes into his businesses.
His appeals definitely didn’t fall on deaf ears; church members began investing in droves,
forming the bulk of his income for the two businesses at one point.
None of them knew they had been taken in until it all blew up in 2020.
This is even more embarrassing because it’s not Bethel Church’s first rodeo.
The congregation had seen a similar scam in the not-too-distant past.
In 2016, a man named David Arnold Souza began scamming church members.
Taking advantage of their faith—and allegedly their advanced age in some cases—Souza told
members that he knew how to work the stock market.
He proceeded to fleece about $650,000 from the church at large.
The money went to dental work, travel, gym membership, and a rental Cadillac costing
a cool $1,800 per month.
He ultimately ended up netting an 18-year sentence for his scheming and was ordered
to pay back about $520,000 to his victims.
He won’t be eligible for parole until he’s served at least 9 years of that sentence.
Kenneth Winton Kenneth Winton of Oroville started out as
just another person scammed..
Piercey pulled him in and had him throwing money into the pot.
At some point, though, things changed.
Piercey invited Winton to come aboard and help him manage Zolla.
Before long, the two were thick as thieves; Winton was in on the scam.
Winton’s time at Zolla started as a token role in customer service.
He took on angry clients and did all he could to keep them from going to the cops with the
whole thing, keeping up the appearance of a successful finance company.
By 2019, he was appointed the CEO of Zolla, and had a hand in operating Family Wealth
Legacy.
In 2020, not long before things hit the fan, Piercey handed Zolla over to Winton and let
him handle it as the owner.
Winton ended up pleading guilty, with sentencing set for February of 2021.
Details on what happened to him aren’t easily available, but he faced almost 20 years in
jail.
He'd also have to pay a $250,000 fine.
Aftermath Piercey, the man at the center of it all,
still seems to be awaiting sentencing.
Available records don’t indicate any entry of a plea at the moment, either.
In any case, things aren’t looking good for the engineer of Family Wealth Legacy.
With 31 felony counts hanging over his head, Piercey’s chances of avoiding prison time
are extremely low.
Some of his charges carry standard penalties of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
This will, of course, be in addition to any ordered reparations.
With Piercey’s accounts mostly drained, officials will have difficulty figuring out
how to pay back victims.
Piercey himself is most likely in for a life sentence, according to court documents.
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