McGinn and Smith, charged with fraud, seek new investors

Hmm. It's interesting to see that David L. Smith and Timothy M. McGinn, two security alarm industry investors who made headlines this spring after the SEC charged them with bilking investors in a Ponzi scheme, are back in the news--with a new investment venture.

Smith and McGinn have started a new investment company and have been trying to raise more than $500,000 to loan a small Georgia-based alarm company $425,000 at an annual interest rate of 19.62 percent, according to the Times Union, a newspaper in Albany, N.Y.

This time, the newspaper says in a story this week, Smith's and McGinn's former administrative assistant owns the new business, Security Alarm Credit, and is running it out of her house in East Greenbush, N.Y. Smith and McGinn are just her employees--and executive vice presidents, the newspaper says.

(Below is a photograph from the Albany Times Union of the East Greenbush, N.Y. home which serves as the headquarters of the new Security Alarm Credit business.)

Longtime partners Smith and McGinn were the principals of McGinn, Smith & Co., an Albany-based investment firm that conducted investment dealings in the alarm industry. The company is now in receivership after the SEC in April seized Smith's and McGinn's business and personal assets and accused the pair and their company of defrauding investors of at least $80 million. Places the money went included the pair's own pockets and to pay for exotic dancers on McGinn's You Only Live Once cruise ship business, the SEC said.  The court case is pending.

I'm trying to get hold of McGinn, Smith and their attorneys, as well as the SEC and others involved in the story to learn more.

McGinn invoked his civil rights in an interview with the Times Union about the new business venture. “My partner David Smith and I are not enjoined from earning a living and this is the United States of America,” McGinn reportedly told the paper.