That meant one thing: It was time to get sleuthing.

"We feel like we're detectives, and our job is to go to the crime scene and figure out what happened, follow the money and try and help the victims as best we can," Sonn said. "It's often a whodunit."

Sonn teamed with Sallah, who often serves as a Securities and Exchange Commission receiver, Walter Davis of Dunbar Davis in Mississippi and Brian Pastor of the Atlanta Lawyer Group, who had received a similar call from a client in Georgia.

The cause of LaBoa's death was blunt force injuries to the upper torso and head, according to his death certificate. And a search of his office left Sonn convinced "somebody must have ransacked it."

A small safe was open and empty, near a pile of books about how to hide money, including, "Secrets of Swiss Banking," "Offshore investments that safeguard your cash" and "How to move assets offshore for privacy, protection and tax advantage."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, LaBoa left no obvious money trails, but a tipster claimed he had life insurance. So Sonn pinpointed LaBoa's life insurance agent and contacted every company with which they worked.

"I blasted out 20 letters saying, 'Hey, my clients were the victim of a Ponzi scheme. Any life insurance? Is there property? Was there money?' " Sonn said.

Sure enough, Hartford Life and Annuity Insurance Co. and Transamerica Life Insurance Co. responded, revealing they had $4 million worth of life insurance for LaBoa.

But it wasn't that simple.

'A lot to lose'

LaBoa's ex-wife, Terry Lee Brown, and young son — referred to as GLL — were the beneficiaries, and they were going to put up a fight.

LaBoa's alleged victims filed suit in Mississippi, claiming they lost about $7 million and reasoning that's where most of the scheming took place. But the insurers sued in Georgia, where LaBoa died, with interpleaders asking who they should pay.

A legal fight ensued over which state law applied, and the stakes were high.

"Depending on where it went, both parties had a lot to lose," Sonn said. "Mississippi law says if you're ripped off in a Ponzi and you can prove your money was traceable to an asset, you can get the asset. Georgia law was different. It says, for insurance policies, the beneficiaries have first claim over any creditor."

It's "a very odd statute," according to Sallah, who says he plans to write an article about how it can make certain policies "creditor-proof" if there's no equity.

"You steal a bunch of money, you name your child as a beneficiary of an insurance policy, you use the stolen money to buy premiums for big policies, and then you die," Sallah said. "And the creditors that you ripped off are insulated from going after the child, potentially, for the insurance policy."

The plaintiffs' team hired a top Georgia Ponzi scheme expert, who concluded LaBoa was running a Ponzi scheme because the only money LaBoa's company Crimson Financial Group had came from investors, and was used to buy the insurance.

Brown's deposition was also telling, in Sonn's view, as she conceded her ex-husband was never the breadwinner in their marriage and was presented with his tax returns, showing he made just $5,000 a year.

"I'm like, 'How did you think he was paying for private school? How did you think he was paying alimony payments? Where did you think the money was coming from?' 'I don't know,' " Sonn said. " We found it suspicious that all this money is being paid for private school and more than $400,000 was paid to her, but she didn't know her husband was making any money."

An investigation revealed LaBoa was a jetsetter who regularly gambled at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and rented a pricey flat in London with his girlfriend and director of operations Katy Steele, who Sonn says disappeared after LaBoa's death.

Hundreds of pleadings later, U.S. District Judge Michael Brown in the Northern District of Georgia ordered mediation before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Clay Fuller, who suggested splitting the money.

"It was an all-or-nothing gamble, and I think cooler heads prevailed and the baby was split," Sallah said.

Brown's attorneys were Georgia solo practitioner David Anton and Josh Daniel, Dan Webb and Norma Ruff of Webb Sanders & Williams in Tupelo, Mississippi.

James Beakes of Butler Snow in Georgia and Deirdre Connolly of D'Arcambal Ousley & Cuyler Burk in New York represented Hartford, and H. Sanders Carter Jr. of Fox Rothschild in Atlanta represented Transamerica.

They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Exit strategy?

In Sonn's 32 years of Ponzi scheme work — which include the infamous Bernie Madoff and Scott Rothstein cases — this was the second time an alleged operator died under mysterious circumstances.

"What made the case hard was you don't have the perpetrator. What you're always hoping is the perpetrator gets arrested and, in order to make a plea bargain in criminal court, he has to tell the court what happened," Sonn said. "You like to find out the truth, but we'll never know because he fell 40 feet to his death only a few months after the money disappeared."

If LaBoa were still alive, Sonn said he'd love to ask, "What was your exit strategy?"

Like many Ponzi schemers, LaBoa appears to have used common interests to gain people's trust, meeting many alleged victims through Alabama Crimson Tide football games.

But if they'd looked him up, they'd have seen he was no longer registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

"Check out your adviser, and if they're not registered and if you can't get a good background on them, think twice," Sonn said.

Sallah said LaBoa left behind "a trail of tears," as many of his alleged victims lost all or most of their money.

"There's no real winners on either side," Sallah said. "We're fighting over money that he left his son, so it was a tough case."