PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – As part of his scheme to defraud nearly $1 million from Oregon investors, a man claimed to be an agent of a secret group made up of heads of state, world-renowned economists, the Vatican, and others, according to newly unsealed court documents.
Richard Macadangdang Sales had been living outside the United States since 2012, according to the FBI.
“FBI agents traveled to Indonesia and met Sales as he was deported on January 11, 2018,” an FBI spokesperson said in a prepared release. “FBI agents escorted him back to the United States and arrested him after touching down on U.S. soil.”
Sale, 68, made his initial court appearance on Jan. 12, 2018 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James in California.
In December 2017, a federal grand jury in Eugene indicted Sales on four counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering for an alleged scheme that cheated investors out of nearly $1 million.
Late Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Oregon moved to have the indictment against Sales unsealed. The indictment now reveals important details about the case not previously released when the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office announced Sales’ arrest.
In 2011, according to the indictment, Sales started soliciting investors to fund his expenses for “locating, possessing and negotiating” certain assets that he claimed were worth millions of dollars. Although Sales’ description of the details of the investment varied, generally, the investors were told that he possessed the ability to recover hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. Treasury Notes that were located in East Asia and the Pacific.
Prosecutors allege that Sales claimed that, as part of the recovery process, he would take control of a certain percentage of the funds and use them to build humanitarian housing projects for victims of natural disasters in third world countries. Sale falsely reported that the investments, structured in the form of loans, would provide a quick return on investment, within approximately 60 days, and high returns of as much as 100%.
In addition to benefiting from the payment of interest on these loans, Sale “falsely claimed that the investors, many of whom worked in the construction industry, would benefit by being the recipients of building contracts for these housing units,” according to the indictment.
In documents to investors, Sales agreed to underwrite all loans negotiated on his behalf, according to the indictment. The documents were supposed to alleviate investors’ concerns regarding repayment of their money.
According to federal prosecutors, Sales represented that he was a delegate of a secret group comprised of heads of state, world-renowned economists, the Vatican, and others.
“He claimed the ‘doctrine of our syndicate’ carried the signatures of ‘John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul VI, Golda Meir, Chang Kai Shek, Lee Kuan Yew, Queen Victoria and many others,’” according to the indictment.
Sales claimed that this secret group financed thousands of projects worldwide. He also claimed that the United Nations “is just a front for what we want to do,” according to the indictment.
Records show that Sales claimed this group had given away or granted over one trillion dollars for “projects” around the world. Sales also falsely stated that he had personally given away billions of dollars, court documents show.
To satisfy some investors’ questions, Sales claimed that he maintained high-level contacts in governments throughout the world, which allowed him access to the treasury notes and the unique ability to tum these assets into returns for the investors, according to court documents.
At one point during the alleged scheme, he claimed to have more than $26 billion in U.S. Treasury Notes in his possession; and that he had “personally in a vault in Hong Kong” more than $800 billion in “authenticated assets.”
Records show investors in Oregon gave Sales more than $900,000.
A court date for Sales in U.S. District Court in Oregon has not been set.