The United States prosecutors are seeking the extradition of Belizean Andrew Godfrey and four other executives named in a major scheme to launder money, hide investments and evade taxes. On Tuesday, the Financial Intelligence Unit with assistance of local police for hours stormed IPC Corporate Services LLC on Coney Drive and took control of files and electronic devices. The operation lasted for hours and continued into the night as the police acted on a warrant to seize whatever evidence they could find at the firm. IPC Corporate Services LLC is accused in a Belize billion dollar tax evasion and money laundering scheme. On Wednesday, US citizen, seventy year old Robert Bandfield, was arrested in Miami. News Five’s Isani Cayetano has been following this story and has an update.
On Tuesday, Belize City police besieged the offices of Titan International Securities, following the indictment of a group of executives accused of being involved in a series of criminal offences related to investment fraud. The scheme involved as much as five hundred million dollars, the equivalent of one billion Belize dollars. While the arraignment before a grand jury took place inside a courtroom in Brooklyn, New York, authorities here wasted no time ascending to the fourth floor suite where they proceeded to confiscate files and other office materials which were loaded into trucks. Computers and other electronic devices were packed in another vehicle and taken to an unnamed location. 
The charge is that since 2011, six directors of respective businesses registered to the Coney Drive address have been engaged in an operation designed to hide their clients’ assets behind a veil of obscure Caribbean entities. Named in the accusation are seventy-year-old Robert Bandfield, and fifty-one-year-old Andrew Godfrey. Both men, through IPC Corporate Services, assumed titular ownership of their clients’ stock in thinly-traded, microcap issuers to help them avoid U.S. securities laws, including legislation requiring beneficial owners of more than five percent of certain issuers’ stock to openly report their holdings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The proceedings against Bandfield, Godfrey and four others are indirectly related to CYNK Technology Corp. In July, the company’s penny stock skyrocketed by thirty-six thousand percent on Wall Street. The social network company, prior to the rapid surge, had no assets, no revenue and only one employee. For an hour in July, CYNK had a market value of more than six billion U.S. dollars, immediately raising eyebrows among traders. News Five understands however, that an undercover operation has been ongoing since 2012, resulting in the indictment of Rohn Knowles, Kelvin Leach, Brian De Wit and Cem Can.
On Wednesday, Bob Bandfield was arrested in Miami and efforts are being made by U.S. prosecutors to extradite the other five executives. The debacle is unraveling publicly, playing out like an episode of CNBC’s American Greed. Collectively, Bandfield, Godfrey and IPC, a limited liability company organized under the laws of St. Kitts & Nevis, headquartered their operation in Belize where their clients paid them handsomely to set up a pecking order of similar companies, as well as international business companies under the laws of both Caribbean countries. At the root of the pyramid are companies with very little share capital, their stock holdings nominally own by IPC.
News Five also understands that an undercover agent masquerading as a stock promoter happened upon the scheme when he was referred to Titan International Securities in November 2012 by another outfit operating in the Bahamas. The agent subsequently flew to Belize and met with Rohn Knowles who reportedly offered to help him manipulate a stock by trading it back and forth at increasing prices through Legacy Global Markets, registered to Brian De Wit, also named in the indictment.
We contacted the Financial Intelligence Unit today, but we were told that the FIU Director, Eric Eusey, was unavailable.
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