ATLANTA — The Georgia Secretary of State is asking for more powers from lawmakers during the 2025 legislative session.
Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger is asking that legislators give the office the ability to recover money for victims of financial fraud.
Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray spoke to members of the Sec. of State’s Office for more information about what the new law would do.
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Raffensperger’s office issued an emergency order in January, demanding $500,000 as a civil penalty from a real estate investor they accused of stealing millions of dollars from Georgia investors.
But under current Georgia law, those funds cannot be recovered and returned to the victims.
The law the Sec. of State is asking for would change that.
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The emergency order was targeted at Mark Jackson, who would provide weekly updates to investors at Atlanta Discount Home Deals via social media about deals in real estate that he was working on.
“To our good fortune, the market value has literally doubled from our acquisition point,” Jackson said in a Facebook video post.
The last update posted was in May 2024. Four days before the emergency order came down from the Secretary of State, Jackson’s wife reported him missing.
Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling told Channel 2 Action News that many of the properties that Jackson told his investors he owned, he did not. And some didn’t even exist.
“Essentially, at the end of the day, it’s a Ponzi scheme,” Sterling said. “But it’s very sophisticated. It wasn’t crazy Returns was eight, ten, 12%, which is a natural kind of thing you’d see in something like this.”
To many investors, that’s why it looked legitimate.
The Sec. of State’s emergency order alleged that at least 30 victims were defrauded out of more than $4 million.
Under current Georgia law, the office is barred from returning any of the money they recoup from cases like this, and giving it to the victims. The legislation being proposed for the current legislative session could change that, if it passes.
“It would allow our office to work to recover money for victims. Right now, we don’t have that power and the feds do have that power,” Sterling said. “But if we had that power here, we could move much faster, much better to take care of Georgians who have been victims of fraud.”
As it stands, authorities still don’t know where Jackson is. An email sent by Channel 2 Action News to his company asking for comment bounced back.
Both the Georgia Sec. of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation want to hear from victims, they said they think there are many more out there.
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