Rich Lajoie admits he probably never will get back the $40,000 from a 401(k) payout he re-invested with a California investment group now under indictment in Utah.

But the Camarillo resident wants to be able to look his family in the eye and say he did all he could to hold the company's leadership accountable -- possibly with jail time.

"My philosophy is 'bars, not Bahamas' for them," said Lajoie, one of a growing number of investors in at least three states who believe they were scammed by Corona-based Alternate Business Capital and its affiliate, Mutual Benefits Union Corp.

"We want sister cases in every jurisdiction they operated in," said Lajoie, who is serving as a contact person for some members attempting to get their complaints addressed.

The angry investors are trying to find an investigative or regulatory body in California to take their claims as seriously as the Utah Attorney General's Office, which filed felony securities fraud charges against four ABC executives in January.

The company held seminars in 2001 and 2002 in Southern California, Utah and Nevada, with officials promising returns of 6 percent to 300 percent through a complicated series of accounts with varying liquidity, according to a court affidavit.

Two of three plans, for example, guaranteed on fliers that investors could reap the principal, plus returns of up to 132 percent.

What ABC's promoters didn't tell potential investors was that the Federal Trade Commission had once accused its top official, Nina Cano of Huntington Beach, of operating a pyramid scheme.

In 1998, the FTC issued a permanent injunction against Cano, forbidding her from making false or misleading statements about any "marketing schemes," based on a court affidavit.

She reportedly paid back nearly $2 million to investors to settle allegations that her old business, Credit Development International, made false claims when it promised each investor returns of up to $18,000 a month and an unsecured credit card with a high borrowing limit.

Cano and two other ABC executives, including Francisco Candedo, 31, of San Diego, were arrested Jan. 17 as they headed into an ABC seminar. A fourth official turned himself in later.

A preliminary hearing in the Utah case is scheduled for August. Calls to ABC's offices in Corona and to an attorney reportedly representing Cano were not returned. A message on the company's main phone line said an invitation-only membership meeting is scheduled for Saturday.

"I get the feeling we won't be invited," said Lajoie, noting that he received a final statement and 1099 federal tax form Monday, but no check.

"What angers me is that if they reported the income to the IRS, it will be our responsibility to prove we never got the money," Lajoie said.

Lajoie and others have met with an investigator at the Ventura County District Attorney's Office, which would neither confirm nor deny that a case has been opened. They also filed a complaint with the Ventura office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Charlene Barlow, the Utah assistant attorney general prosecuting the case, describes ABC as a fairly "run-of-the-mill" scam that took advantage of the inflated expectations of many investors during the stock market boom of the late 1990s.

"Since the stock market decline, people who have had losses started thinking, 'I need to earn it back,' " Barlow said. "They wanted to believe those high-yield claims."

Lajoie agrees, noting he decided to explore investment alternatives after the stock market began to falter in mid-2001, depleting his 401(k) account at a former employer.

"I didn't take the higher claims really seriously, but for the first few months it looked on paper like I was doing really well, better than what the stock market was doing back then," said Lajoie, who also took advantage of the weekend personal finance workshops the company held in Valencia.

The higher returns could be achieved, investors were told at these meetings, if they pooled their funds in an account that invested in Mutual Benefits Union Corp., described as an exclusive currency trading venture.

"They made it sound like we could invest like the big guys," said Sonny Chung, a co-worker of Lajoie. Both were referred to the company by the same tax accountant.

Chung, an Agoura Hills resident, estimates his losses range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. When he complained, Chung said, he was told the company was growing so fast that its customer service staff was struggling to keep up.

"They always had a believable excuse," said Chung, adding he didn't realize the trouble he was in until receiving an anonymous call in February from someone he believes was an ABC employee. "I didn't even know Rich had been trying to get his money out until after that."

Chung, who received his final statement and 1099 on May 1, said he also has not received a check despite repeated assurances from ABC staff.

ABC billed itself as a provider of various services, including tax planning and legal aid for small- or home-based business owners, according to the company's promotional materials. It also offered bill-paying, in which the company would pay a member's bills from interest income in their account.

Lajoie said his suspicions about the company grew after the company failed to make timely payments on his college student loan several months after he opened his account in October 2001.

He said he made several attempts to close his account and regain his money, but each time was talked out of it or was stone-walled.

"When I opened my account right after 9/11, they said everything was going great with the business," Lajoie said. "Then when they didn't meet their obligations, they blamed it on 9/11. They're still blaming it on 9/11."

-- Rich Lajoie can be contacted at lajoierd@hotmail.com.