(Beau) Diamond is not everyone's best friend

Beau Diamond, charged with fraudulent Ponzi scheme involving forex trading.

Ever heard of Sarasota’s Diamonds?

In 1985, then husband and wife Harvey and Marilyn Diamond hit gold with Fit For Life, a diet and lifestyle book that they authored promoting the consumption of raw fruits and vegetables. Millions of copies were sold topping New York Times’ best seller list.  Since the book was such a hit, Marilyn and Harvey came up with Fit For Life 2 and later on Harvey published a few more books about living a healthy lifestyle on his own.

This year, the Diamonds’ 31-year-old son Beau is making the headlines courtesy of his mini-Madoff scandal. As published in St. Petersburg Times:

It was that celebrity background, combined with his considerable charm, that helped Beau Diamond attract friends and friends of friends to his investment club. At least 200 investors had sunk $37 million into Diamond Ventures by the time they received this e-mail shortly after Christmas:

"Dear Club members: I regret to inform you that the funds have been lost."

Today, the 31-year-old Diamond sits in the Pinellas County Jail, arrested Sept. 1 on federal charges that he operated a Ponzi scheme under the guise of trading in foreign currencies. The FBI says he took $6.6 million for his own use, including purchase of a $204,000 Lamborghini.

Bail was denied for the young Diamond while the Commodities Futures Trading Commission filed civil fraud action against him to freeze the defendant's assets and seek restitution for victims.

As the forex market boomed, it also became a cradle for fraud and scams, which range from misleading advertisements to fake account statements and outright Ponzi schemes designed to feed profits to existing clients by attracting cash from new investors.

Victims of Ponzi schemes are investors who were easily drawn into "risk-free" investments. “He was very believable,” said victims of Diamond, Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Sadly, most of the victims/investors are those who are about to retire or in retirement.

Perhaps, if those victims took the time to learn forex trading themselves, they might have created an endless stream of profit – solely on their own.

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