Court orders wife of Massachusetts adviser to disgorge $518,000

In a case going back more than three years, a federal court in Massachusetts has ordered Shawnet Thibeault to pay disgorgement and interest totaling $518,062 for her role in a fraud that allegedly involved her husband, investment adviser Daniel Thibeault. The complaint, which was filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2015, charged Mr. Thibeault and others with fraud for misappropriating money from an investment fund. The complaint named Mrs. Thibeault as a relief defendant, meaning that while she received some of the money that had been misappropriated from investors she was not accused of wrongdoing. In the government's civil and criminal cases, Mr. Thibeault was accused of siphoning off some $15 million in assets from the GL Beyond Income Fund, of which he was portfolio manager and investment adviser. The fund invested mostly in individual consumer loans, the SEC said. According to the complaint, Mr. Thibeault represented that investors' money would be pooled and used to make or purchase consumer loans, which would constitute the fund's assets and provide a return to investors when interest and principal payments were made on the loans. The complaint alleged that Mr. Thibeault and the other defendants, but not Mrs. Thibeault, engaged in a scheme to create fictitious loans to steal money from the fund, and to report those fake loans as fund assets. The alleged scheme, which began in 2013, started after GL began losing money, according to the complaint.