Company tries to pry funds from IRS amid allegations

Grace Leong

Wednesday, July 28, 1999 | 10:57 a.m.

A Las Vegas stock "day trader" is seeking to lift a freeze order put on its stock trading account by the Internal Revenue Service after it was implicated in an alleged $10 million money laundering conspiracy involving two Las Vegans.

Sequoia Investment Group Inc. of Las Vegas and its owner, Robert Potter, filed a motion in U.S. District Court last week to free funds totaling $254,890 in Sequoia's day-trading margin account.

Assistant U.S. attorney Jane Shoemaker said the seizure warrant freezing the account was issued based on IRS special agent Joseph B. Atkins' affidavit, which argued there is probable cause to forfeit the property and funds contained in Sequoia's brokerage account.

The warrant said Sequoia's trading account application listed "the employer" of Sequoia as PBA Energy Associates, one of the corporations controlled by Peter Berney, who was implicated in the alleged money laundering conspiracy.

On June 4 the IRS filed criminal charges against Peter Berney and Rebecca Berney, accusing them of conspiring to launder $10 million they allegedly earned through illegal stock manipulation schemes.

The agency alleged the funds earned through the stock manipulation schemes were diverted by the couple into various trusts, real estate and companies including PBA and two other companies, Cambro Investment Group and Watkins Glen Development Trust, in order to avoid detection by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI.

The warrant said PBA and Sequoia shared the same office address at 1700 E. Desert Inn Road, Suite 403, Las Vegas.

The warrant also said federal and state investigators have discovered Douglas Ansell, Sequoia's resident agent and corporate secretary since the company's inception in January, allegedly was used as a nominee by Peter Berney in the schemes.

Ansell, however, denied the allegations, but he acknowledged he was an independent contractor for PBA.

"The IRS has made two statements that have nothing to do with each other and they don't even bother to make the implied connection. They say Peter Burney has an office at the 1700 address, and Sequoia is at that office also. Then they say Douglas Ansell is an officer of the two companies. But they don't say Sequoia is directly involved," Sequoia's attorney Herbert Jacobi said.

"It's an abomination of justice. The information is insufficient for the trading account to be frozen," Potter said. "How can the government prove Sequoia was involved in the money laundering schemes when it wasn't even in existence at the time these schemes were occurring from 1992-1995?"