A share of a Hamilton County hunting club and a large tract of land, owned by an investment fund that was run by alleged Ponzi scheme architect John J. Woods, may be sold.
BW Hunting Club LLC holds 42 acres of vacant land in Harrison off Bryan Road and Hamilton County businessman and club member Bill Lind wants to buy the fund's share, according to federal court documents.
A. Cotten Wright, the court-appointed receiver overseeing the liquidation of Woods' fund known as Horizon Private Equity III, is seeking approval for the $151,935 sale, documents show.
She said she received the offer for the Horizon interest from Lind, who owns a 50% membership interest in the hunting club. Horizon also holds a 50% interest in the club, the receiver said.
Court papers said the property was acquired by the club for $356,800 on June 7, 2018.
The receiver said she consulted with attorneys for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about the proposed sale and the SEC has no objection with the transaction, which still must be approved by U.S. District Court Judge Steven J. Grimberg in Atlanta.
In August, federal regulators in a civil action charged Woods with "running a massive Ponzi scheme for over a decade" that defrauded more than 400 investors in the Horizon fund.
The SEC complaint said the scheme collected more than $110 million from the investors with promises of 6-7% rates of return.
But the complaint said the investments "are worth far too little for there to be any realistic prospect that the Ponzi scheme will be able to pay back existing investors their principal, let alone the promised returns."
Wright, a North Carolina attorney, was later named by Judge Grimberg as the receiver in the case and is liquidating the fund's assets, including more than $55 million in assets in Chattanooga area entities.
Woods, a Marietta, Georgia, businessman who grew up in East Ridge, held interests in a variety of commercial real estate projects and other ventures, including a 20.1% share of the Chattanooga Lookouts minor league baseball team.
The Lookouts recently bought out the share of the team owned by Woods for $1.87 million, and it last week named 11 new members to the baseball club's ownership group.
Woods and a Chattanooga-based investment company also named in the Ponzi scheme, Livingston Group Asset Management Co., which does business as Southport Capital in Chattanooga, have denied allegations of wrongdoing made by regulators.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.