Only In Minnesota: Carp Caper Under Investigation

It sounds like the plot for a yet-to-be-written Coen Brothers’ movie: according to a search warrant unsealed earlier this week in US District Court in Minneapolis, a St. Paul area man named Michael Anthony Powell is under investigation for allegedly swindling investors who were told he had contracts to deliver containerloads of carp worldwide for humanitarian purposes. The search warrant affidavit indicates that more than 40 people have invested in “fraudulent humanitarian carp proposals” with Powell since 1992, and six people have invested $694,000 into Powell’s ventures from 2000 through 2005. No one has been repaid, and Powell has allegedly converted the money to personal use. He has operated under a number of different company names. Among the ventures:

[The affidavit] said Powell allegedly told some investors in 2004 that he had a $1.2 million contract to deliver container loads of carp fillets to China; persuaded some business associates in 2005 to buy a fish plant in Pepin, Wis., where they were going to process carp for buyers he had supposedly lined up in Serbia, and pitched a deal as recently as last December to haul carp from Utah Lake that would be shipped as “humanitarian aid to countries around the globe.”

Minnesota is perhaps the only state where a bottom-dwelling sand-sucking primitive life form (the carp, not Powell) could generate such interest from investors (Star Tribune).