By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

From Cincinnati and from as far away as the Caribbean island of Nevis, investors plopped down $35 million to roll the dice on an options-trading venture of Sycamore Township resident Patrick Kisor. It was a gamble they now regret.

Today, it has fallen to a court-appointed receiver in Detroit to figure out where the money went - and to try to retrieve it. Kisor conceded to civil fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a federal judge in Detroit assigned the mop-up job to lawyer Bradley Schram in February. Based on a court filing by Schram last month, Kisor's clients are a long way from being reunited with their money.

"The documents and information currently available to Schram lack information sufficient to determine, with certainty, the identities of all investors, the amounts they invested and the amounts they received and/or withdrew," the filing stated.

The $35 million came from Cincinnati doctors, offshore bank account holders, the clients of a Detroit money manager and more than 100 others who could handle the minimum $200,000 buy-in. Along the way, Kisor roped in Paul O'Neill, the retired Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees player, and Ingrid Wang, the ex-wife of Computer Associates founder Charles Wang.

What they wound up in was a bait-and-switch scheme. Instead of the options trading plan they signed up for, much of their money went into a grab bag of real estate buys, speculative private companies and an oil-drilling venture. Kisor spent almost $5 million of the money on gambling junkets to Las Vegas, a dozen exotic cars and a free-spending lifestyle.

Kisor, 41, who installed high-end sound systems for a living before going solo as an unlicensed options broker, raised $3.7 million for a company bearing his initials, PDK International, then handled up to $31 million more from Keith Mohn, a money manager in Detroit. Schram said he believes about 100 investors live in the United States, including an undetermined number in Greater Cincinnati. Mohn recruited a "significant" number of non-U.S. investors from a trust company on the West Indian island of Nevis.

Joining forces in a new venture called Agave in 2000, Kisor told Mohn that investors' money would go into a self-taught options trading strategy that he claimed had turned $1.5 million into $42 million during the previous seven years. By the end of the year, though, Mohn learned that Kisor had sprinkled Agave's money elsewhere, the SEC said. Among other things, Mohn found out that Kisor had sunk $1 million into Znetix Inc., a Washington state company that collapsed into receivership and produced several fraud convictions.

Kisor valued his extracurricular stock and real estate holdings at $16 million, but Mohn didn't believe him and parted ways. The SEC alleges that Kisor squandered $2.1 million on gambling junkets to Las Vegas, $2 million on himself and family members, and $750,000 on an automobile collection that included two rare Vector sports cars.

Schram said he has recovered about 30 percent of the $35 million.

"The difficulty is tracing the flow of funds into various illiquid investments and the determination of whether the investments were real or fictitious - and if they were real, if there's any chance of recovering any money from a liquidation of the investments," Schram said in an interview.

That's not the best of news for investors like Steve Brinn, a Sharonville pediatrician who entrusted $305,000 to Kisor in 2002. Brinn said he filed personal bankruptcy a year ago. He blames it on Kisor.

"It's been very frustrating, and it's cost me personally in terms of having to declare bankruptcy," he said. "I would like to eventually obtain some of the money back that I owe to creditors."

Kisor settled with the SEC in December 2002 and agreed to return an amount of money that has yet to be specified. Mohn is still fighting the civil fraud charges. Meanwhile, federal authorities are weighing criminal charges.

Kisor's lawyer, Glenn Whitaker of Cincinnati, said Kisor is cooperating.

Asked if Kisor has returned ill-gotten gains, Whitaker replied, "I'm not sure there's anything to collect on. Most of his assets have been made available to the government."

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com