I spent several months tracking down victims of a far ranging ponzi ring that spent decades swindling numerous innocent people. Like a Mini-Madoff in Houston and Marlin, the story is tragic and heartbreaking and I’m so proud to share a byline with investigative reporter and true crime podcaster, Alissa Fleck on this. She did an astounding job of taking the interviews and some of my notes and tracking down more info to really flesh out this story.
So proud to finally see this go live. Hopefully having their story told is the first step to closure and peace for some people who lost everything, including family members in a few instances. The article below is just part one of a series, here’s hoping that law enforcement and other investigative reporters pick up some of the breadcrumbs we’ve left them…
Check out the first few paragraphs below and you can read the rest at Alissa’s site Crimescoop:
PART I: MURDER AND FRAUD IN TEXAS
Lakshimanarayan “Lucky” Srinivasan, Jeremy Raju Srinivasan, Gwendolyn “Gwen” Stone Stallworth-Sumrall, Alvar Chari, Anirban Haldar and their many co-conspirators, have conned individuals, families, businesses and other organizations out of multiple millions of dollars in cash and assets over the past several decades, leaving many of their victims destitute and their lives ripped apart. The racketeering ring has used a combination of check-kiting, reverse Ponzi and other fraudulent investment schemes to extort money from their hard-working victims, court records show. In 2016, under mounting financial pressure caused by his and his co-conspirators’ volitional fraudulent entanglements, Jeremy murdered his wife and two young children before fatally turning the gun on himself. Lucky, Gwen and the others continue to actively seek new investors to swindle.
BY ALISSA FLECK & PHILIP FAIRBANKS
*Some names in this story have been changed where requested to protect victims’ identities. Their names are asterisked.
Exactly five years ago today, on the morning of April 19, 2016, at 8:30 a.m., Jeremy Raju Srinivasan, 37, sent his father Lakshimanarayan “Lucky” Srinivasan a final text message: “Everything is not OK. Please call police. Goodbye.” What came next was a tragedy that would rock their quiet Houston, Texas suburb, leaving in its wake a trail of devastation and unanswered questions.
Within 15 minutes of sending that text message, Jeremy, his wife Natalie Altier Srinivasan, 35, and their two children, 5-year-old Sienna and 2-year-old Michael James (“MJ”), would be found dead by police inside their Katy, Texas home. One of the detectives who processed the scene, Detective Daniel Calvillo of the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Department, told family members that Natalie was found in bed with a single bullet wound to the head. Jeremy had killed his wife, then shot each kid twice in the head where they lay asleep in bed, before turning the gun on himself.
read the rest of part I directly at Crimescoop!
Phil Fairbanks: portfolio 