Victims have grown numb to the slow drip of justice in the Jack Brown Ponzi scheme case.
The apparent ringleader died without charges being filed, and an alleged accomplice — Brown’s wife — only this week entered a plea agreement on a bankruptcy charge more than a year after it emerged that Brown had taken millions of dollars from widows and retirees.
Bankruptcy trustee Jerry Farinash has repeatedly alleged in court that Brown’s Tax Service was a front for a wide-ranging Ponzi scheme, in which the Brown family used customers’ tax information to target wealthy Soddy-Daisy residents. Those who agreed to make investments, in what victims have called a “family Ponzi scheme,” were in reality helping to fund a lavish lifestyle for the Brown family on a hilltop compound in Sale Creek.
Thus far, no one has gone to jail for any part in the alleged crime, which has played out almost entirely in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
In the only criminal charge filed since Brown’s Soddy-Daisy tax service was pushed into bankruptcy in November 2012, U.S. Attorney Bill Killian accused Janet Brown this week of concealing $25,000 in jewelry from the bankruptcy trustee, then lying about it under oath at an April 16 bankruptcy creditors meeting.