An American who wired close to $6 million in fraudulent funds to an account at the Bank of Bermuda, was found guilty in a US court on Friday of numerous counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to evade taxes and the filing of false tax returns.

William McCray was found guilty on all counts by a federal jury in the court of the Southern District of California, after six weeks of trial and deliberation in a case naming both McCray and another defendant, Paul Yates.

In handing down their verdict, the jury found that $5.8 million of $30 million in funds swindled by the pair from investors, had been wired by McCray to an account set up at the Bank of Bermuda. Those funds, as well as a 1998 Porsche Boxster, were found to be assets involved in McCray?s money laundering convictions.

Mr. Yates, an account manager and salesperson for a company named International Forex, was charged and convicted with numerous counts of mail and wire fraud.

The charges against the two men were laid after an apparent Ponzi scheme ? run by the pair out of offices in La Jolla, California ? was uncovered in an investigation in the late 1990s by the FBI, the IRS, the US Postal Service and the Office of the United States Trustee.

McCray and Yates were indicted in August 2000 on charges that they had defrauded investors of $30 million by encouraging investments in International Forex and Earthwise International, two firms that purportedly traded foreign currency.

The court found that the two were able to swindle investors out of the millions by falsely representing the annual returns the two companies had achieved, claiming that the company?s managed currency accounts had made an annual return of 50 percent and higher each year from 1993 through 1998.

The pair were also found to have given false assurances to investors by saying the funds were insured and being held in trust in a Bank of New York account.

In fact, at least $5.8 million of the funds were reportedly in an ?offshore? account at the Bank of Bermuda, not at the Bank of New York.

Assistant US attorney George Aguilar, a prosecutor in the case, told that McCray had wired the funds to the Bank of Bermuda account on February, 19, 1999 and that ?almost all? of those funds had been transferred back to the US within 60 days.

By sending the millions ? which Mr. Aguilar said had been found to be proceeds of the mail and wire fraud ? to Bermuda, the court found that McCray had acted in a way that ?constituted money laundering?.

He added that there was no evidence given during the case to indicate how McCray had come to set up an account at the Bank of Bermuda, but he said the account may have had some tie to Earthwise International, which was a company based in the Bahamas.

The Bank of Bermuda was not yesterday aware of the charges and verdict against McCray. A bank spokesperson said: ?The fact that a Bank of Bermuda account was involved is not enough to suggest that the bank would know about the case as no allegations have been made against the bank.?

A news release from the court said the jury?s finding on the $5.8 million in assets was ?the first step in having those assets forfeited to the United States as part of McCray?s sentence.?

But Mr. Aguilar said it was not known where the funds were.

McCray faces a maximum sentence of 101 years in prison and fines of $10.5 billion, according to the court?s news release while Yates faces up to 90 years in prison and fines of $4.5 million. Sentencing for the two men has been set for February 9, 2004.