Bird indicted in second investment fraud scheme

Hamilton Alan Bird was indicted Tuesday by a statewide grand jury for allegedly bilking investors out of $690,000 while he was being prosecuted in a separate scam that eventually netted him a 24-year prison sentence for securities fraud and theft.

Bird, 47, of Colorado Springs, is charged with seven counts of securities fraud and theft for allegedly luring investors with promises of high rates of return on foreign-currency trading investments, then using their money in part to pay his defense attorney to fight the earlier charges, according the indictment. He faces four to 12 years on each of the charges, all felonies, that would be added to his current sentence, which he is serving at the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington.

“This case is remarkable not only for its breadth and the number of investors affected, but also because Mr. Bird perpetrated a portion of this fraud while criminal proceedings were pending against him,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said.

Bird allegedly collected $690,000 between January 2006 and September 2008 — when he was sentenced in the previous case — from 14 victims in Colorado Springs, Monument, Greeley, Arizona, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Texas through Nevada-based EquityFX Inc., the indictment said. Much of the money allegedly was used to pay other investors or for personal expenses that included furniture, car payments and attorney fees, the indictment said.

Bird allegedly failed to tell investors in EquityFX that his foreign-currency trading investments had lost money or that he had been indicted in May 2006 on eight counts of securities fraud and theft for a hedge-fund investment scam in which 330 victims lost more than $12 million, the indictment said. He also allegedly failed to disclose that the Colorado Securities Division sued him and his company, XL Capital Partners Inc., in 2004 for violating the state’s securities laws.

The Securities Division suit was settled in 2007, when Bird agreed to a $6.6 million court judgment. He pleaded guilty to the criminal charges as part of a plea agreement in March 2008, two months after another defendant in the same case was convicted. Bird also failed to disclose to investors that he had been convicted of felony theft in a 1989 case and was convicted of making false statements to the IRS in a 1993 case, according to the indictment.

When sentencing Bird in 2008, Fourth Judicial District Judge J. Patrick Kelly called him “a parasite who clings to these victims’ good will and their good fortune,” since many of his victims were local churches, religious organizations and their members.
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