Tagg Romney's Company Misled Reporters About Its Relationship With Ponzi Scheme–Linked Firm

http://www.thenation.com/blog/170546/tagg-romneys-company-misled-reporters-about-its-relationship-ponzi-scheme-linked-firm#
<snip>
The New York Times followed up on my story with its own report and confirmed that Tagg’s business partners received incentive pay for selling bunk Stanford CDs. They wrote about one Stanford victim, a local Charlotte businessman and philanthropist named Herman Stone. Stone was pressured by Brandon Phillips, an executive working now for Tagg’s firm, into putting $2 million into a fraudulent Stanford CD and lost everything.

Solamere Capital attempted to distance itself from the story by claiming that their business was not actually connected to the Ponzi-tainted firm, Solamere Advisors. In a statement to ABC News, they claimed that their managers, not Solamere Capital itself, were involved (emphasis added):

“It is inaccurate to suggest that Solamere Capital made an investment in this firm [Solamere Advisors]. Solamere Capital was approached to invest in a new wealth management firm being launched by these three individuals. After extensive due diligence, Solamere Capital decided not to invest because the business was at an early stage and did not meet our investment criteria. However, Spencer Zwick, Tagg Romney and Eric Scheuermann each own a minority stake in the business as individual investors.”

However, Solamere Capital’s statement, provided to ABC News, is false. Disclosures from the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Tagg’s company indeed maintains ties with the Ponzi-linked firm, Solamere Advisors.

The claim that Solamere Group didn’t invest directly in Solamere Advisors, the firm employing former Stanford employees, appears to have been an attempt to shield Mitt Romney. Mitt invested about $10 million into Tagg’s Solamere Capital venture, which would suggest Mitt has a direct financial relationship with folks involved in a Ponzi scheme. That’s because Solamere Capital pools together investment money to co-invest in other companies.