Columbia Investment Manager Indicted

Columbia, SC (written by David Dykes/Greenville Online) -- Former investment firm manager Arthur Field was booked into a Richland County jail and will have a bond hearing Thursday in Columbia, law enforcement officials said.

Field was indicted by a state grand jury on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and forgery related to business activities of Easley-based Capital Investment Funding, according to the indictment unsealed last week.

He was booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Columbia about 10:20 a.m. Monday, according to jail records and facility officials.

Mark Plowden, a spokesman for Attorney General Alan Wilson, whose office is prosecuting the case, said Field, 59, will have a bond hearing Thursday before Circuit Judge G. Thomas Cooper Jr. The hearing is scheduled at 9:30 a.m. at the Richland County Judicial Center.

An attorney for Field couldn't be reached for comment.

A Greenville attorney, Fredrick Scott Pfeiffer, also is accused of participating in a pattern of fraud related to business entities of the two men and withholding key information from investors in written offers to sell securities, according to the indictment.

Neither Pfeiffer nor his attorney could be reached.

Field and Pfeiffer were charged with two counts of conspiracy and multiple counts of securities fraud, according to the indictment. Field also was charged with forgery, according to the indictment.

The indictment alleges a pattern of deceit and fraud, including not disclosing in a prospectus to South Carolina investors that the president and chief executive officer of Capital Investment's parent company and a Capital Investment director had been removed from those entities for improper financial transactions with money that came primarily from Capital Investment, according to court documents.

The Attorney General's Office said 688 people were affected by the alleged deception.

The indictment also alleges that Field and Pfeiffer hid Field's true business interests in various entities from investors, his partners, the South Carolina Securities Division and others, according to the documents.

Field and Pfeiffer, according to the indictment, were interested in playing board games with military, historical or fantasy themes. Many of the business entities they formed took their names from those historical or fantasy themes, the indictment alleges.

The two men began to intertwine their business affairs to take advantage of Field's source of funding from Capital Investment's investors, the indictment alleges.

Capital Investment's roots date back to the 1990s, and its business plan was patterned after that of HomeGold Financial and its Pickens-based subsidiary, Carolina Investors Inc., the indictment alleges.

The indictment alleges that Field and a mortgage broker in the northeast who bought and sold foreclosed properties found a commercial property for sale in Ridgefield Park, N.J. Field had handled closings and other work for the broker's transactions, according to the indictment. The broker wasn't charged in the indictment.

The two men put together a group of shareholders to form a company to buy and develop the property, the indictment alleges. Field and the broker pitched the HomeGold and Carolina Investors business plan to the shareholders, according to the indictment.

Money raised from South Carolina investors would be sent to the parent company in New Jersey for re-lending and real estate development, the indictment alleges.

A judge approved a mediated settlement agreement in which Field's company acknowledged a judgment of nearly $38.5 million to noteholders and he agreed to resign as the firm's manager, according to court records.

HomeGold and Carolina Investors went bankrupt in 2003, costing about 12,000 people an estimated $278 million. Six former HomeGold or Carolina Investors officials pleaded guilty to or were convicted of various crimes.