This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Jason Buck is running for Congress, vowing to shrink government and restore fiscal discipline to a federal government he says has run amok.
But Buck, a former NFL star, has had his own financial struggles, twice filing for bankruptcy protection and getting tangled up in major Ponzi schemes.
"It's hard to run into someone crooked in your life and lose money from it and hurt your family," said Buck, one of 11 candidates seeking the Republican nomination in Utah's 2nd Congressional District. "It's hard to have adversity in business, but that's what life is. Adversity makes you stronger."
Buck, who has the endorsement of Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, said the ordeal is part of a difficult life that has prepared him to represent Utah in Congress.
"If you live the perfect Norman Rockwell, patty-cake life and step from a wealthy family to the wealthy university to community organizer to public office, I don't think you really relate to what everybody goes through, and I'm thankful for it," he said.
Thad Hall, a professor of political science at the University of Utah, said Buck's track record could be a liability in his campaign.
"Sometimes voters are willing to forgive people for doing stupid things once, but when it becomes a habit, it illustrates a pattern of behavior," he said. "The other thing about this is the other candidates are going to rip him for being involved in this because it illustrates that he isn't a careful businessman in the work he does.
"People like the idea of having businesspeople in Congress, but they like the idea of having successful ones," Hall said.
Buck endured a hardscrabble youth. He was raised on a farm that was foreclosed on when he was young, leaving the family homeless and Buck sleeping under a truck and scavenging for clothes in the county dump.
He walked on as a quarterback at a junior college but had to quit the team because he couldn't afford tuition. He spent two years working at a seed mill before being given a scholarship to play at Ricks College and later transferred to Brigham Young University where he won the Outland Trophy for the nation's top interior lineman.
He played seven seasons in the NFL, played in two Super Bowls and retired in 1993. Buck said it had always been his dream to buy a farm to take the place of the one his father lost. So when he retired, Buck took the nest egg he had saved — which he says isn't as big as people might think — and bought a farm in Manti. But he couldn't make ends meet, the farm lost money and other business investments struggled as well.
"I fell just a hair short," Buck said, and the bank was unwilling to bend. In 2002, Buck and his wife filed their first Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Soon after, a close friend enlisted Buck to help recruit investors to an Arizona-based fund — Mathon Management Co.
Once a month, Buck would fly to Arizona and meet with potential investors, his NFL celebrity a draw to well-heeled prospects who were promised returns of as much as 84 percent on their investments.
Court documents and statements from regulators say the fund almost exclusively targeted wealthy Mormon businessmen who could commit a minimum of $500,000, but Buck said that the faith was never part of his sales pitch.
He earned a 3 percent commission and over less than two years raked in $382,000 in commissions on more than $12 million in investments.
Mathon investors included former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White, former BYU and NBA basketball star Danny Ainge, and former Salt Lake Olympic Chief Operating Officer Fraser Bullock.
But Mathon's promises were unsustainable. One of its founders, Duane Slade, gambled millions at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, according to court records, and used money from investors to bail out a previous failed land deal.
Soon money from new investors was being cycled through to pay earlier investors. In 2003, the Utah Division of Securities took action against the Mathon partners for selling securities without a license.
In 2005, Arizona officials shut down the $160 million Ponzi scheme and appointed a conservator to try to recover the assets. In December 2009, five Mathon executives were indicted on 40 counts of fraud and money laundering.
Buck said he had no idea Mathon was a scam until it blew up. Those who put their money in were sophisticated investors who had accountants and attorneys study the pitch.
"I thought I was doing a great job for the people I introduced, and the thing you learn from it is bad people are bad people," Buck said. "Look who Bernie Madoff was able to trick. It's the same with these guys. There were a couple bad characters who had a company down there who duped a lot of good people including me."
Meantime, Buck was working to pitch investors to another opportunity. His company, LBS Investments — Buck was the "B" in the name — was working with an investment adviser in California, GJB Enterprises, operated by Gerald Berke, with promised returns of 18 percent, according to court records.
Another group, FFCF Investors, which itself was the remnants of a failed Ponzi scheme, Ascendus, told investors it was shifting $13 million through LBS to Berke, but less than $8 million was actually transferred, according to court records.
Subsequent investments in FFCF were largely used to pay those original investors. All told, LBS moved $13 million to Berke, who was running his own $80 million Ponzi scheme, using money from new investors to pay money it owed, according to filings in Berke's case.
Buck said they "smelled it" when the Berke deal went bad and sued GJB Enterprises and Berke in February 2009 when interest payments to LBS stopped.
Annette Dellon had invested her life savings with Ascendus and FFCF and lost nearly $3 million.
"I think [Buck] was as guilty as the day is long," said Dellon, who was one of the earliest and largest investors in Ascendus.
She said it is unbelievable that Buck and his partners could have moved money between two Ponzi schemes without knowing.
"If someone is smart enough to be elected to our Congress — say this guy is innocent, which I don't believe for a second — but if he's going to be running for our Congress he should be smart enough to know who the hell he's dealing with," said Dellon.
Receivers have been appointed to try to recover funds from both FFCF and GJB, and there is ongoing litigation.
Buck said that, in part because of LBS' quick action, about two-thirds of the money LBS actually invested with GJB has been recovered. Nearly all of the investors are satisfied with the result, Buck said, and several are supporting his congressional campaign.
Berke was indicted in federal court last year and disappeared for months before he was arrested in Canada earlier this month.
But Buck said legal fees from the litigation was crushing and drove him into his second bankruptcy, filed in June 2010. In the filings, Buck lists a pair of mortgages on his Highland home, more than $100,000 in credit card and other debts and just over $20,000 a year in income, plus a few thousand dollars a year in LDS Church assistance.
"I don't know why hardships follow me, but they just do. It's how you deal with it. You can feel sorry for yourself or you can pick yourself up," Buck said.
Buck said he knew his financial issues would become an issue when he decided last year to run for Congress — but the knowledge didn't dissuade him.
He said he thinks that voters with concerns about his track record will come away with a different view after spending 30 minutes with him.
"I think people who really look at it and [look at] who I am will see an honest, honorable man who has taken a couple punches in the chin and I will get back up and never quit."
Twitter: @RobertGehrke