For four years, salesmen in Tennessee and Florida boiler rooms sold prospective investors on what they claimed were oil and natural gas projects “tailored for the conservator investor,” guaranteeing them 15-55 percent “safe and consistent” annual returns that would ‘last for decades.’”
Through companies called the Southern Energy Group, TennStar Energy and Black Gold Resources four men—two of them convicted criminals and two with troubled histories as broker-dealers—and the sales teams they oversaw secured more than $15 million from investors across the nation, federal prosecutors in Savannah say.
