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Iowa man accused of million-dollar 'Ponzi scheme' appeals license revocations • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]

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Date: 2025-05-02

A central Iowa investment advisor accused of defrauding investors in a million-dollar Ponzi scheme is appealing the revocation of his business licenses.

Des Moines investment advisor Cory J. Dawkins of Elite Wealth Partners is asking a Polk County judge to review and overturn a decision by the Iowa Insurance Division to revoke his license and registration as an investment advisor and insurance producer.

Dawkins is also seeking an immediate stay of the license revocations, at least until a final decision is rendered in the case, to avoid “substantial and irreparable harm” to his business and reputation.

In court filings, Dawkins says he has spent his entire professional life in the insurance, banking and financial services industry.

“Since the Iowa insurance commissioner’s investigation began, my business has suffered an approximate 87% revenue drop,” he told the court. “Several negative articles about me have appeared online since the commissioner’s investigation began. These articles present a distorted view of the situation by falsely suggesting that clients have lost all their money and portraying me as the mastermind behind the investments.”

Dawkins said there is a “significant possibility his clients many recover their investments” and that he had “no decision-making authority in the underlying investments at issue.” He adds that if he is barred from the securities industry, efforts to recover his clients’ money will be “substantially curtailed.”

Without court intervention, he argues, he will be forced to close his business, will be unable to pay the $2.3 million in restitution ordered by the division, and will have to file for bankruptcy protection. He adds that with his professional identity being “intrinsically linked” to his role as a financial advisor, the revocation of his license “would cause me severe psychological distress that extends far beyond financial considerations.”

A hearing in the matter is now scheduled for May 30, 2025. The Iowa Insurance Division is seeking dismissal of the case, arguing that by statute Dawkins had 30 days to seek judicial review of its decision, but filed his case after 33 days had passed.

SEC said business was ‘actually a Ponzi scheme’

In 2022, the Iowa Insurance Division formally charged Dawkins, Elite Wealth Partners and EWP Permian Basin Fund II with securities fraud; performing unregistered activity as securities agents; committing acts that constituted grounds for discipline as investment advisors; and fraud or dishonest conduct as demonstrated through incompetence, untrustworthiness and financial irresponsibility.

According to the Iowa Insurance Division, Dawkins offered high-risk, unsecured investment opportunities that were not in his clients’ best interests. The division alleges the scheme was launched sometime before May 2019 when Dawkins spoke to a Polk County couple about investing in EWP Permian Basin Fund II, whereby the couple’s money would be used to back a company that was purportedly purchasing oil wells.

According to the division’s findings of fact, EWP was not actually buying wells and had no assets to secure the notes that were issued to investors. The representations made to the Polk County couple and to other subsequent investors by Dawkins were “untrue” and amounted to securities fraud, according to the division.

EWP, the division found, was set up as a vehicle through which people could invest in an entity called the Heartland Drilling Fund. Dawkins failed to review Heartland’s financial statements and “exhibited significant uncertainty” as to which oil and gas interests were actually held by Heartland, the division found.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the division noted, would later conclude that promised returns to investors “were little more than an illusion and were actually a Ponzi scheme.”

Dawkins and Elite Wealth collected thousands of dollars in fees related to their investment transactions. Dawkins, however, had a conflict of interest by acting as both an investment advisor and a self-interested promoter of EWP, the division concluded. He also was alleged to have steered investors to a “very high risk” entity called the Carson Oil Field Development Fund II without disclosing all of the risks involved.

By 2021, the division found, Dawkins and Elite Wealth should have known they were recommending investments “that had numerous characteristics of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme,” with initial investors being paid from proceeds generated by newer investors.

Division cites ‘heartbreaking’ effect on investor

One of the alleged victims in the scheme was a 19-year-old Iowa State University student whose father had recently died of cancer. The division said it found her subsequent testimony about her dealings with Dawkins to be “simply heartbreaking.”

The young woman, whose name is redacted from public filings in the case, had invested $188,000 of her father’s money with Dawkins, according to the division.

“We needed money to pay for a funeral,” the woman testified at a hearing. “We simply had my dad’s body in a freezer for two weeks. So, we were really struggling, and we owed a whole bunch of our family members money. And we just kind of proceeded because we were so desperate for funeral money to pay for his gravestone and to pay the mortgage on our home … I guess my dad already chose that investment. So we just kind of went with whatever he had … And if he trusted Cory with that market on that, then I just went ahead with it.”

Dawkins, the division found, later accepted no responsibility for steering the student toward the high-risk investment, stating that Dawkins “absurdly claimed” that although he was a fiduciary, his introduction of the EWP investment opportunity to the student was not a recommendation of any kind.

In its findings of fact, the division said it found Dawkins’ testimony at a hearing on the matter to be “wholly untrustworthy, leaving us with the unmistakable impression that Dawkins was willing to say practically anything” to avoid accountability.

The division stated that losses by 15 investors, including interest, totaled $2,371,618.

Iowa Insurance Commissioner Douglas Ommen revoked the investment advisor registrations of Dawkins and Elite Wealth, revoked the insurance producer licenses of Dawkins and Elite Wealth, and permanently barred EWP from issuing or offering securities of any kind in Iowa.

Ommen also ordered EWP to pay $2.3 million in restitution, with $1.9 million of that amount payable immediately, and the remaining $400,000 payable no later than March 31, 2026. Ommen’s order also specifies that Dawkins and Elite Wealth are also held liable for the $2.3 million in restitution.

Dawkins has not responded to requests for comment from Iowa Capital Dispatch, but SEC records indicate he, Elite Wealth and EWP have denied all of the division’s allegations.

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