Judge grants order freezing woman’s assets-WEB ONLY

A Hamilton County woman accused of swindling investors in a clean coal energy startup agreed today to an injunction that freezes her assets, including artwork by Pablo Picasso, jewelry and a luxury waterfront home.

The agreement in Marion Superior Court makes permanent a temporary restraining order issued last week by Judge Patrick McCarty following a civil complaint filed by state Securities Commissioner Chris Naylor.

According to the complaint, Dorothy Geisler-Tragardh duped investors and her own partners in the company by selling stock at $56 a share, distributing shares worth only 30 cents and pocketing more than $2.1 million for personal use. Geisler-Tragardh did not attend the one-hour hearing.

The case also involves the Chris and Jan Marten, the owners of J.S. Marten Jewelers in Carmel.
 
Details of the agreement were not immediately available, said Jim Gavin, a spokesman for the Indiana secretary of state’s office, which regulates securities.

The order by McCarty covers Geisler-Tragardh’s home on Geist Reservoir in suburban Indianapolis, the artwork, a Rolex watch, a diamond, a Mercedes Benz and two other cars and a boat.

The home is one street over from that that of Marcus Schrenker, the indicted money manager who authorities say tried to fake his death in a Florida plane crash on Jan. 11. Schrenker’s home and other assets also have been frozen in an unrelated case.

Naylor last week said Geisler-Tragardh was a founding partner in Praxis Resource Partners LLC in September 2006 and, as executive vice president, was responsible for raising money from investors. She was fired Feb. 10. She deposited money from the stock sales into an account at Symphony Bank in Carmel, where co-defendant Jan Marten was one of the founding board members.

The account paid $752,618.24 to Geisler-Tragardh, mostly for the purchase of her home a year ago, the complaint said. An additional $75,000 went to Marten, $25,000 to her Carmel jewelry business, J.S. Marten Inc., and $11,475 to her husband and co-defendant, Chris Marten, whose assets also were frozen by McCarty in today’s order.

The complaint alleged Geisler-Tragardh hired Chris Marten as a consultant for Praxis, and the two sold shares of the $56 stock but distributed shares of the cheaper stock.

State prosecutors charged the Martens with tax evasion last October, saying they failed to remit $875,230 in retail sales tax to the state over three years. That case is pending, and the assets of J.S. Marten Inc. have already been frozen, Gavin said.