If there is a silver lining to the case against J&J Consulting Services and its alleged $450 million Ponzi scheme, it is that Matthew Beasley is still alive. He will undoubtedly reflect on this good fortune in prison. He may also reflect on the fact that he lost his credentials as a lawyer and destroyed the lives of many people. Was it their fault? Perhaps and that is at the core of this ethical discussion.
J&J Consulting Services
I guess the most action-packed aspect of this case is when the FBI showed at Beasley’s doorstep. And, true to his nature it would seem, he thought he could bully the agents by waving his gun at them. His bravado got him shot in the arm and chest.
Beasley was the owner of the Beasley Law Group. It was a firm that essentially “chased ambulances.” I won’t debate whether the practice was ethical or not. However, we do know that Beasley, a Las Vegas resident, liked to gamble sports. Really gamble. He was into his bookie for $4 million.
This need led Beasley, along with co-conspirators in the chiropractic and investment trades (this case just keeps getting better), to launch J&J Consulting Services. They realized they had a gold mine if they could sucker-in people. According to information from the SEC:
“Beasley and others sold investors bogus interests in insurance tort settlements, claiming they would receive a baseline 12.5% return on investment every 90 days.” Yes, friends, they promised that in some periods, it could be as high as 20%
Beasley and his promotional branch explained that the money would come pouring in because they were, after all, experts in fighting for the little injured guy they would get huge cash settlements.
Before going on, let me pause for a second and ask who, in this 2022 inflationary, currently, strife-filled world, would actually believe that they could get a 12.5% baseline return on an investment every three months? My question is somewhat rhetorical.
Who is the guy behind the curtain?
Of Matthew Beasley Esq., we know this: he and his business partners must have been quite convincing as orators to sucker a group of gullible investors. As the money from “the fund” started to roll in, the first thing Beasley did, was to pay off his gambling debt. At least the mob won’t be coming after him.
However, as vulnerable as Beasley was to the lure of point-spreads and playoff games, he knew how to work the other strings like a puppeteer. Beasley, the lawyer, did not want to take the hit alone, so he approached a guy named Jeffrey Judd, who owned a company called J&J Entities. They agreed to promote Beasley’s fund.
At the same time, Judd told “the marks,” the gullible, that he and Beasley had a legitimate “litigation financing business.” This meant the fund appeared to be backed by personal injury lawyers whose clients were awaiting settlements.
They made a giant leap, Beasley and Judd, when they started running out of cases. It was easy, they reasoned, let’s make up injury cases! The fund then graduated from a “hazy business” partially funded by real cases, to a Ponzi scheme where one set of investors were funded by a new set of investors.
I should add, that the conspirators, in order to make the fund look more legitimate, kept adding the names of injury lawyers supposedly referring settlements, without ever consulting with them for permission to use their names.
From 2017 to March 2022, it has been estimated that this “rocking fund,” handled close to $450 million in sucker money, all operating on the assumption that the fund was paying 12.5% a quarter, or incredibly, 50% per year!
The money of the partners was freely spent on over the top luxury and indulgence.
According to the FBI, Beasley confessed, “He got names of attorneys for the scheme, but ‘I never actually talked to them,’ He confessed that as Jeffrey Judd found more investors, ‘I made up more attorney’s deals and just kept growing it.’”
At the moment, the only charge against Beasley is aiming a weapon at FBI agents. It will get worse for he and his co-conspirators. It will cost him years in jail. It is impossible to imagine how many people he fleeced. The government has frozen all of the assets of those involved.
But of those, we must ask how they could ever fall for such a promise? How special must he and the co-conspirators made those suckered investors feel when they took their huge checks. Promises, of course, are just that, and if a lonely, rich person really wants to feel special, may I recommend adopting a shelter puppy?
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