The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that instead of putting the investors' $47.3 million into a lucrative currency-trading scheme he promised, Beckman and his wife used the money to fund a lifestyle of the rich and infamous.

The retiree, the water plant operator and the nurse anesthetist didn't know each other. The only thing they had in common: They put their money and their trust in the hands of investment guru Jason Bo-Alan Beckman.

The three, along with 140 other investors, lost it all. The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that instead of putting the investors' $47.3 million into a lucrative currency-trading scheme he promised, Beckman and his wife used the money to fund a lifestyle of the rich and infamous.

On Tuesday, a federal judge froze the Beckmans' assets and appointed a receiver. The hearing came a day after SEC lawyers filed a civil case against Beckman, his wife, Hollie Beckman, and Beckman's Minneapolis company, Oxford Private Client Group.

The SEC says he lied to investors to get their money, then misused the funds when they came in.

"Investors placed their trust in Beckman, putting their life savings in his hands, and in return, he defrauded them," SEC attorney Steven Seeger told Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis.

Seeger had sought the freeze, saying a planned sheriff's foreclosure sale of the Beckmans' Plymouth home needed to be stopped because the home — valued at $1.25 million — was bought with swindled money. The lawyer told the judge that seizing it was "a constructive first step for holding him accountable for defrauding so many people."

But David Hashmall, a lawyer for Beckman, told the judge there was no


immediate need to freeze assets, and he claimed his client has been cooperating with SEC investigators for several months.
"There's another side of the story," Hashmall told the judge. "Mr. Beckman denies any wrongdoing."

Hashmall grumbled that he had little time to prepare for the hearing because it came only 24 hours after the government filed its 44-page complaint. He said that in light of Beckman's cooperation, "It really is unseemly for the SEC ... to proceed in a way that I believe is quite unfair."

"We have no fire to put out," he said.

Beckman, 41, was an investment counselor who ran Oxford PCG out of the same Minneapolis mansion where Trevor Cook engineered a $194 million fraud scheme that landed him in federal prison for 25 years. The SEC says Beckman was a major fundraiser for Cook, drumming up a quarter of Cook's business.

Beckman's alleged scheme involved investments in currency trading. Victims said he promised them big returns, little risk and the ability to withdraw their money at any time.

Instead, the SEC claims, Beckman ran a Ponzi scheme.

The government claims at least $7 million of investors' money ended up in the Beckmans' pockets, fueling a lavish lifestyle that included posh homes in three states, a Jaguar, two Land Rovers, two Mercedes, a luxury suite at Minnesota Wild hockey games, country club payments and other ritzy outlays.

The SEC's motion for an asset freeze said the Beckmans "literally spent more on resorts — $36,539 — than some investors have left to their name."

The government claims Beckman's wrongdoing included his silence. Seeger told the judge that Beckman admitted in a sworn deposition in October that he hadn't trusted Cook and had harbored concerns about the man's business practices, yet continued taking money from investors.

As the lawyers argued, Beckman sat by Hashmall's side, looking straight ahead. Every now and then, he nodded in agreement with something his lawyer told the judge.

Seated in the front row of the courtroom were a handful of the 143 investors Beckman is accused of defrauding. Some of them, approached after the hearing, declined to comment.

Some had provided affidavits in the case that the government considers heartbreaking. For example, Larry Paige, 62, a water plant operator from Robbinsdale, wrote that after hearing Beckman's sales pitch in May 2007, he liquidated part of his individual retirement account and invested $99,300 in Beckman's currency-trading scheme.

He's not seen a penny of it since, he wrote.