Businessman Charged With Ponzi Scheme : Probe: Prosecutors say Morris English Jr.’s Wellington Group ran one of the biggest real estate scams in California history.

A Redondo Beach man was indicted and arrested Thursday for allegedly bilking more than 1,500 Southern California investors out of more than $30 million in what prosecutors said is one of the largest real estate scams in California history.

In a 50-count indictment, the U.S. attorney’s office charged Morris D. English Jr., 46, with running a complex scam from 1985 to 1991 and illegally using the proceeds for a lavish lifestyle that included the purchase of two airplanes for himself and a limousine for his father.

According to federal prosecutors Jeffrey Isaacs and Peter Spivack, English’s now-defunct Wellington Group Inc. promised investors annual returns of as much as 16% on their money, which was supposed to be loaned to property buyers and secured by real estate.

But much of the money Wellington raised was never lent out and instead went straight into English’s pockets, prosecutors charge. In some cases, the money that borrowers repaid was used to pay the interest Wellington owed to other investors, in a classic Ponzi-type scam, attorneys said.

The average investment in Wellington’s programs was about $20,000, Isaacs said, but at least one investor pledged $400,000.

“We’ve found a lot of older people whose entire life savings have literally been wiped out by this,” he said.

Attempts to reach English’s attorney, Richard Callahan Jr. of Pasadena, were unsuccessful.

Wellington had offices in Manhattan Beach, Rolling Hills Estates and Torrance. English once hosted a radio program on KIEV, which he used to promote Wellington’s latest investment programs.

If convicted of all 50 fraud, contempt and money laundering charges, English could be sentenced to 470 years in prison and fined more than $60 million.

He is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, Isaacs said.