David Rowe

David Frank Rowe has become the latest in a long line of former principals of Grenada-licensed banks to admit his involvement in investment fraud in the United States. Rowe, 59, of Brandon, Mississippi, who was indicted as long ago as March 6, 2001, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a plea agreement at the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California on December 11, 2007.

A default judgment for $6.4 million has been entered in the United States against offshore investment firm Lines Overseas Management Ltd. and an offshore brokerage arm of the Royal Bank of Canada in connection with an allegation of banking and securities fraud.The judgment against LOM and RBC Dominion Securities, of the Turks & Caicos Islands, was entered at the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on July 1, 2004 after they failed to defend a civil complaint after being served in December, 2001, according to court records.

Application for the appointment of a Commissioner to collect evidence for a criminal investigation in the United Kingdom into suspected investment fraud by William Booth Cook and Donald Nutter.

A United States-based promoter of sham offshore investment products has been sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of securities fraud in Texas. Cameron O. Bailey was also fined a total of $6,000 and ordered to pay restitution to his victims when he was sentenced on August 29, 2002 at the 283rd District Court for Dallas, in Dallas County, Texas.

Two more men who were involved in the fraudulently-operated First International Bank of Grenada have filed for bankruptcy in the United States.Paul James Peiffer and Robert John Skirving separately filed for bankruptcy on May 20 and May 23, respectively, at the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon.

Cambridge International Bank & Trust, whose banking license was revoked in Grenada last year, has brought a lawsuit in the United States against its former principal, David Frank Rowe. The action was filed as an Adversary Proceeding at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on May 13, 2002.

A Canadian businessman who is currently in prison awaiting trial for an alleged offshore banking fraud was an agent for a US-based firm that itself was a victim of fraud, according to a civil lawsuit.David Rowe, who at one time was President and CEO of Grenada-registered Cambridge International Bank and Trust, is mentioned along with CIBT in a civil complaint filed at Federal Court in Oklahoma.

Bermuda-based investment firm Lines Overseas Management and Turks & Caicos Islands-based RBC Dominion Securities are among 72 defendants in a civil fraud lawsuit filed in the United States by clients of Cambridge International Bank & Trust, of Grenada. They are in good company, with fellow defendants including household names such as J&H Marsh McLennan and Lloyds TSB Bank (Isle of Man).

Six weeks after they were arrested in the United States, former Grenada bankers David Frank Rowe, 52, and Gerard Michael Burns, 52, were criminally indicted in San Jose, California on April 11. Rowe and Burns are being held in custody pending the outcome of their case, while a third indictee, Waylon McMullen, 54, is subject to an arrest warrant but has not been apprehended.

Two businessmen who helped run Grenada-registered Cambridge International Bank & Trust were arrested in the United States on February 28 and are being held in custody. David Frank Rowe, 52, and Gerard Michael Burns have been accused of fraud at the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

In one of the latest lawsuits to be filed as part of the on-going Grenada banking scandal, creditors of Cambridge International Bank & Trust claim to have been defrauded of $50 million.Cambridge, which began life as a sub-bank of the First International Bank of Grenada, offered annual interest rates of up to 51 per cent per annum, according to the complaint.

Grenada regulators have allowed the sham insurer known as IDIC to incorporate on the island after regulators in Nevis and Dominica closed down the company, we can disclose. IDIC was closed down by Nevis regulators on January 27, 1999 and, the following month, was shut down in Dominica, where it had moved.

Offshore Alert's story about the banking/insurance scam that appeared in last month's edition of the newsletter has created quite a stir in the Caribbean. Several newspapers in the region followed up on the scandal, including those in Nevis, St. Vincent and Bermuda, and we received requests for assistance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the the FBI.

Offshore Alert can today expose a massive fraud involving at least three banks, an insurance company and a stock exchange into which investors are believed to have invested tens of millions of dollars. Participants in the scam include the World Investors Stock Exchange in Grenada, the International Deposit Insurance Corporation in Nevis, the First International Bank of Grenada, the International Exchange Bank, which is registered in either Nauru or Grenada but operated out of Bermuda and Texas; and Fidelity International Bank, which is registered in Nauru but operated from St. Vincent.