Adviser tracks clients' cash to Panama

(startribune.com ) A Minneapolis money manager has tied up land and bank accounts in a frantic search for missing funds.

For months, investors in a soured currency investment program that was promoted by some Twin Cities financial advisers have been left to wonder what became of their money that seemingly vanished overnight.

Now the evidence is mounting that at least some of the missing millions went to Panama.

Bo Beckman, one of the Minneapolis financial advisers who promoted the currency investment, and one of his attorneys traveled to Panama last month in a frantic and successful effort to track down the fate of at least part of the missing money. They were able to identify and freeze some valuable land that a former business associate and others were buying for a condominium tower and another parcel that was intended to become the site of the largest hotel-casino in Panama City.

Beckman said he traveled to Panama after obtaining information from a variety of sources, including investigative reports in the Star Tribune, indicating that at least $12 million of the investors' money had been routed through a California attorney's office and on to Panama to pay for the land.

According to Lawrence Shapiro, the attorney who traveled to Panama with Beckman, a Panamanian court filed documents with the public land registry last week and notified banks nationwide that it had issued an order freezing both the land and any accounts held by the business entities developing the condo tower and casino.

Beckman is a 39-year-old financial adviser who owns the Oxford Private Client Group, where he specializes in equity investments. Until July, he operated out of the Van Dusen mansion in Minneapolis alongside Trevor Cook, who promoted the suspect currency investment through companies called Oxford Global Advisors and Oxford Global Partners. Beckman was paid commissions for referring clients to the currency investment.

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Original Source: http://www.startribune.com/business/69421272.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUg7Kk8P3iUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiU
Date Retrieved: November 9, 2009