Losses by investors in the Caribbean-based Millennium Bank are more than triple what United States (US) authorities initially projected and little is likely to be recovered, a court-appointed receiver said in a new report on the case.

Millennium and its affiliates took in more than US$246 million since 2006, receiver Richard Roper said in an update filed in a federal court in Texas.

The total includes supposed gains from allegedly fraudulent certificates of deposit rolled over by investors into new investments, but a breakdown wasn't given.

Roper also had bad news for the more than 800 investors, reporting that months of selling assets and searching for bank accounts have yielded only a small percentage of the missing millions.

What will be available to pay claims will be far less than expected, he said.

"Indeed, investors stand to recover little cash, if any, on their investment," he said in the report, filed with the court Friday.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had said investor losses totaled at least US$68 million when the agency filed suit in March alleging that William J. Wise and several associates ran a Ponzi scheme through the bank, based in the eastern Caribbean nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Lawyers for investors had predicted the total losses would grow higher.

No actual investment

Keith L. Miller, an attorney in Boston, said he represents more than 180 people whose losses alone exceeded US$90 million.

Most he said were modest investments by people who thought the offered rates of 6.0 per cent to 10 per cent on the bank's CDs were not out of line.

Wise, a Canadian attorney who was based in Raleigh, North Carolina, was the alleged architect of the scheme, working with associates in Napa, California.

Authorities allege none of the invested money was actually invested, as promised by the bank's representatives, but instead was used to pay earlier investors or was spent by Wise and the other participants in the scheme.

Wise, who has not responded to the SEC's allegations in court, could not be reached for comment. He has apparently left the US amid an FBI investigation into the alleged scheme, Roper said in court papers.

Last month, the receiver auctioned off property seized from Wise and his family in North Carolina, generating more than US$750,000.

- AP