The SEC also alleged that he doled out cash to pay for studio time for the musical career of his wife, Meshelle, with the money that came pouring in. The couple even made a splashy music video starring Meshelle Taylor draped in white fur and diamonds. The name of the song? “Billionaire.”
Conway said investors soon started suspecting trouble as well, and panicked families began banging down the doors of the North Carolina office where she and Taylor worked.
They put locks on the doors,” after one particularly angry client stormed in.
Taylor started to panic, Conway said, sensing that his house of cards was beginning to tumble.
“You could see him sweating,” she said. “You could see him coming in and trying to save the day or the moment that we’re in it, but it just looked shady.”
As the SEC complaint alleges, “simply, City Capital could not pay its bills.”
“Any investor who resisted was subjected to an endless cycle of unreturned phone calls and emails [and] empty promises of imminent action,” reads the complaint. “To the extent investors survived this gauntlet to still insist on repayment, any funds they received invariably came from new investor money.”