The former president of a fraternity group at Northwestern University has been charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit he ran, including allegedly stealing $267,000 to buy into the Iraqi dinar scam.
Between 2006 and 2012, 77-year-old Peter Schellenbach ran a nonprofit devoted to upkeep on the Sigma Chi fraternity house at Northwestern. But prosecutors say that Schellenbach transferred $460,000 to his personal bank account to cover yacht club fees, credit card bills, and a large investment in nearly worthless Iraqi dinars.
Iraqi dinars are have little value outside of Iraq, but a long-running scam in the United States centers on convincing naive investors that the currency is on the verge of being revalued. In theory, that would make anyone who holds dinars fabulously wealthy. Schellenbach allegedly spent $267,000 of the fraternity’s money on buying dinars from Sterling Currency Group, whose owners were convicted of fraud last year. Prosecutors say Schellenbach lost all of the fraternity money he invested in dinars. He pleaded not guilty, while the Northwestern fraternity was suspended by its national organization in February.
