SC Promoter Faces Fraud Charges

The South Carolina attorney general’s office has accused Marc Hubbard of soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars for an Alicia Keys show and presenting a fraudulent insurance certificate to keep the lease on a club he operated.

“He acquired approximately $700,000 from the victim without using those funds for that purpose, and without evidence that he ever had contacts or the ability to deliver the concert,” AG Alan Wilson said in a statement to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.

According to documents from the state’s Securities Commissioner, Hubbard and his company, Sports Dimension, Inc., began sending unsolicited mailings to potential investors outside the state in 2009, offering people promissory notes that “would yield 30% annually.”

The materials said sales from the notes would be used to book “up to three major North American tours in each of the next three years” and represented SDI as a “regional company specializing in the concert business” that had 12 years of experience in the field.

SDI reportedly collected as much as $1.8 million from promissory note sales – even after a number of states including California, North Carolina and Nevada sent cease and desist letters to bar Hubbard from soliciting investments.

However, when asked to provide verification in the form of contracts and supporting documentation between SDI and representatives for Keys and other artists, the company came up short, the order said.

Hubbard was eventually ordered to stop selling securities in South Carolina as well. The AG’s office will prosecute the case against him, the Herald-Journal said.