Extremist Who Once Led SCV Accused of Violating Securities Laws
Ron G. Wilson, a former national commander of the Southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) who appointed several extremists to the group’s governing boards and oversaw a purge of anti-racist members, has been accused by the South Carolina attorney general of defrauding investors in his company. A complaint made public Monday says Wilson and his Atlantic Bullion & Coin “have engaged in acts, practices, and transactions which violate the South Carolina Uniform Securities Act of 2005.”
Five violations of state’s security laws are alleged in the civil complaint, including making false claims under oath and the fraudulent sale of securities. The complaint says that Wilson’s business handled about $71 million, predominantly for silver investments, in the last four years. Wilson allegedly told securities investigators in South Carolina that he had some $16.9 million of his customers’ silver in a Delaware depository. But the attorney general’s complaint says that the depository has no records of Wilson, Wilson’s company or the silver. The complaint alleges that when customers asked to cash out, there was no silver in their accounts or the accounts had been altered.
Wilson is well known to Hatewatch, having overseen a campaign to oust from the SCV members of the group who wanted it to be actively anti-racist. Working closely with his white supremacist ally Kirk Lyons, Wilson appointed racists and anti-Semites to key posts, purged some 300 SCV members who opposed racism, and worked to turn the SCV into an actively neo-Confederate organization. Wilson also served for a time on the board of Lyons’ legal outfit, the Southern Legal Resource Center, and Wilson’s daughter worked for Lyons.
Wilson’s extremist track record includes being the author of five essays about the evils of communism (one praising the legacy of disgraced Sen. Joseph McCarthy) in the tabloid of the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which has called blacks “a retrograde species of humanity.” He also spoke at a 1997 CCC meeting. During the same period, Wilson led the South Carolina Heritage Coalition, a group whose vice chairman was Jerry Creech, state director for the CCC.
In the mid-2000s, besides selling investments in gold and silver, his company hawked the book Barbarians Inside the Gates, written by 1960s Defense Department official Donn de Grand Pré. The tome is viciously anti-Semitic and approvingly quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Czarist forgery that purports to reveal a Jewish plot to take over the world.
The Anderson, S.C., Independent Mail reports that Wilson told state securities investigators under oath in February that he had about 500,000 to 600,000 ounces of silver bars in the Delaware depository. But the complaint lays out what looks like a Ponzi scheme, wherein Wilson pooled customer money and used proceeds from recent investors to pay off earlier investors. And Wilson was engaging in this business in South Carolina and several other states even though he agreed in writing in 1996 to stop selling securities because he was not a licensed broker or agent.
The complaint asks that a court appointed receiver handle Wilson’s company’s assets to determine what it owns. Civil penalties of $10,000 are requested from Wilson and his company for each violation.
