Owners of Pier 1 Imports and Radio Shack accused of running Ponzi scheme

[TheFugitive]

A pair of flamboyant investors who purchased the intellectual property of bankrupt retailers such as Radio Shack and Pier 1, promising to reinvent them as online retailers, have been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of running a $112 million Ponzi scheme.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/25/us-news/owners-of-radio-shack-pier-1-imports-and-other-brands-accused-by-sec-of-operating-112-million-ponzi-scheme/

Other dead retailers that were purchased by the pair include Stein Mart, Dress Barn and Modell's Sporting Goods. It looks like they made misrepresentations about the performance of those companies to bring in new investors, and used their money to pay off the earlier ones.

One has to wonder if the high-profile promise to reopen Ames in 2023 was part of a similar scam.

[Crazybangles]

I knew all along this had to be a huge scam! I'm sure this "comeback" of Ames will be the same.