San Diego, CA - September 13, 2022 - I Did It, the true story of Gina Champion-Cain, the mastermind behind the largest woman-led Ponzi scheme in US history of over $350 million released today. The story was told by Gina Champion-Cain to authors, Barbara Bry and Neil Senturia, who also interviewed victims of the scam and others who knew Gina.
Gina Champion-Cain does not profit from this book.
This real-life story that reads like a Hollywood script includes a multitude of participants, banks, hedge funds, egomaniacs, and small-time crooks, all fueled by greed, stupidity, and a keen desire to look the other way. Even when they were looking in the right direction, all these people and entities saw nothing. Gina was the Penn and Teller of misdirection, acting with caring behavior to other people (while bilking her investors), creating philanthropic endeavors, and single-mindedly pursuing her dream of building an empire, taking it public, and cashing out all the investors.
In August 2019, Gina’s seven-year program of selling phony liquor license loans ended when the SEC, the US Attorney’s Office, and the FBI filed suit and shut it down. In San Diego, Gina, then fifty-four, was an icon. To the outside world, this beautiful, charismatic woman looked as if she had succeeded in a male-dominated good old boys club—building an empire that included real estate, restaurants, and retail; she was a guest economics commentator for the San Diego Union-Tribune; she served on prestigious corporate and nonprofit boards.
The City of San Diego even honored her with her own Gina Champion-Cain Day. But her life and her empire were a house of cards funded with money from massive financial fraud.
What kind of chameleon was she to fool so many for so many years?
“It is true that Gina was the mastermind, but she was aided and abetted by bundlers, investors, and a title company, in search of outsized returns, all desiring never to know how the sausage was really being made,” said Senturia.
Gina Champion-Cain plead guilty and was sentenced on March 31, 2021, when she admitted that she swindled more than $350 million from investors promising to use their money to make loans to business owners who were attempting to acquire California liquor licenses.
Champion-Cain and her co-conspirators instead used these funds from new investors to pay back others whose investments would soon be redeemed, and embezzled funds to support her other businesses and her lavish ‘celebrity‘ lifestyle.
This new riveting book will detail how Gina Champion-Cain masterminded this Ponzi scheme and how she was able to keep the ruse going for years before she was caught.
To learn more visit: https://www.ididit-book.com/
About the Authors
Neil Senturia is a San Diego entrepreneur and venture capitalist who writes a weekly award-winning business column for the San Diego Union-Tribune (I’m There for You Baby, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Galaxy.) He has known Gina Champion-Cain for more than 20 years.
Barbara Bry is an entrepreneur who was a business writer for the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times and has served on the San Diego City Council. She has a Harvard MBA and is the founder of three organizations that empower women. She and Neil are married, and he is grateful. They each brought two children into their marriage, so together they have four adult children—all married to people they adore. As of this writing, they have seven grandchildren.
Media Contact
Company Name: Publicist-KBC Media
Contact Person: Karen Lauren Ammond
Email: Send Email
Phone: 917-379-1430
Country: United States
Website: https://www.ididit-book.com
