Jackson Jambalaya

The Pelahatchie Pig Lady, aka Cheri Bowen, will pay the SEC an amount to be determined at a later date after the agency sued her for participating in a ponzi scheme.  The ponzi scheme involved the selling of bogus cryptocurrency.

The SEC sued Bowen on August 1 in the U.S. District Court of Northen Illinois.  An SEC press release stated:

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged 11 individuals for their roles in creating and promoting Forsage, a fraudulent crypto pyramid and Ponzi scheme that raised more than $300 million from millions of retail investors worldwide, including in the United States. Those charged include the four founders of Forsage, who were last known to be living in Russia, the Republic of Georgia, and Indonesia, as well as three U.S.-based promoters engaged by the founders to endorse Forsage on its website and social media platforms, and several members of the so-called Crypto Crusaders—the largest promotional group for the scheme that operated in the United States from at least five different states.

According to the SEC’s complaint, in January 2020, Vladimir Okhotnikov, Jane Doe a/k/a Lola Ferrari, Mikhail Sergeev, and Sergey Maslakov launched Forsage.io, a website that allowed millions of retail investors to enter into transactions via smart contracts that operated on the Ethereum, Tron, and Binance blockchains. However, Forsage allegedly has operated as a pyramid scheme for more than two years, in which investors earned profits by recruiting others into the scheme. Forsage also allegedly used assets from new investors to pay earlier investors in a typical Ponzi structure.

The Pig Lady ate quite well at the trough.  The SEC said Bowen was a co-founder of the Crypto Crusaders group and a Forsage promoter. The complaint stated Bowen: 

has been a participant and co-host of many of the webinars hosted by Martinez on the Crypto Crusaders YouTube channel. Bowen has prior experience participating in MLM projects. Upon information and belief, she holds Forsage Ethereum IDs XX7957 and XX9418; and Forsage Tron ID XX1742; among others. Bowen declined to respond to the Commission’s subpoena during its investigation or appear for testimony....

Since the summer of 2020, Martinez hosted twice-weekly webinars on the Crypto Crusaders YouTube channel. On Mondays, he held webinars for individuals who had already invested in Forsage. These “training” webinars often included testimonials, as well as tips on social media marketing and responding to investor questions. Shepperd, Theissen, Bowen, and Deering regularly appeared on these webinars as “leaders.” On Wednesdays, Martinez hosted his so-called “Weekly Webinars” that were aimed at recruitment. These typically included a 30-minute presentation on Forsage Ethereum (and later Tron), followed by testimonials from Forsage investors within the Crypto Crusaders group. The testimonials uniformly highlighted how much the person had invested and how much they had earned in a short period of time....

In a webinar entitled “Weekly Forsage Training 2-17-2021,” Bowen told viewers she joined Forsage as a Level 8 for $3,100 on June 8, 2020 and had made $1.1 million in eight months..... Two days after that, Bowen hosted a webinar on the Crypto Crusaders’ YouTube channel where she advised her audience not to list Forsage’s name in any Facebook posts because, according to Bowen, people would Google Forsage and see videos and articles that it was a Ponzi scheme.

Bowen did not fight the charges but agreed to a partial judgment on September 1.  The motion for entry of partial  judgment by consent states:

Bowen also has agreed to a partial settlement of the SEC’s claims. Attached as Exhibit 1 is her signed consent to the proposed partial judgment. This judgment obviates the need to litigate substantive liability on the part of Bowen, and it permanently enjoins her from violating the federal securities laws at issue in the complaint as well as from engaging in certain other activity. The proposed judgment further provides that monetary relief sought by the SEC – in the form of disgorgement, prejudgment interest and a civil penalty – shall be determined by the Court at a later date on the SEC’s motion. We anticipate moving for such monetary relief after the claims against the remaining Defendants are resolved.

 The case is still pending against several defendants.  

Bowen is known for her pigs in Pelahatchie.