Robert Taylor Ponzi Scheme The Better Life Club of America

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A Better Life For Who?

The Better Life Club of America out of Washington sold investments in an advertising business that would use "900 pay-per-call lines". They raked in $2 million per week at the end with an overall take of $50 million from 6000 investors. Claiming to provide office equipment leases to governments even banks were taken in.

When it finally closed down, The Better Life Club did not have anywhere near enough money to keep paying off its promissory notes which promised a doubling of your investment each three months. The courts found he had only about $2.7 million in the bank but was obligated to pay investors more than $50 million over the next three months. Since the BLC made no profits from any legitimate business activity, he had to raise this $50 million from new investors.

It would have been virtually impossible for him to pull in such an enormous amount of money from new investors the next payment date. But even if he had found a way, he then would have owed those new investors over $100 million in a further three months. The doubling would have continued every three months and there was no way for him to get out of it without defaulting. Like all Ponzi schemes, the "Advertising Pool" was doomed to fail and leave thousands of investors empty-handed.

Most of it was paid out to earlier investors who saw their money double. In a bid to lure in others they arranged to give payout cheques to existing investors at promotional seminars. The doubling was only made possible with the money of later investors.

The initiator spent approximately $1.2 million of the investors' money on a house, pool, Jaguar, trust funds for his children, etc. He also made "loans" of $1.2 million to various people, many of whom were his friends and BLC insiders, and then made little or no effort to get back the principal or any interest.

On June 11, 2001, Robert N. Taylor pled guilty to one count each of mail fraud and for failing to appear whereby he admitted that he carried out a fraudulent $50 million Ponzi scheme. The second count arose out of his failure to appear for a retrial after his first trial resulted in a hung jury.

He faces a sentence of up to 36 months imprisonment on the mail fraud count and 12 months on the failure to appear count, followed by a term of three years of supervised probation. He is currently serving a 10-year sentence for third degree burglary.

Taylor's Better Life Club scheme was the subject of an SEC civil enforcement action 09/95. [U.S. v. Robert N. Taylor, USDC for D.C. Criminal No. 99-0312 EGS]