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                SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
                         Washington, D.C.

Litigation Release No. 15277 / March 7, 1997

United States v. Robert N. Taylor, United States District Court
for the District of Columbia, Criminal No. 96-149 (TFH).

     On March 7, 1997, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan
sentenced Robert N. Taylor to a term of imprisonment of 41
months, followed by 3 years of supervised release.  Taylor pled
guilty plea on July 22, 1996, to one count of felony criminal
contempt and one count of wire fraud pursuant to an information
filed by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.  See SEC
Lit. Rel. No. 14988 (July 23, 1996).  Taylor received a 41-month
sentence on each count, but will serve them concurrently.

     In his plea, Taylor admitted to having committed hundreds of
violations of a court-ordered asset freeze entered on September
1, 1995, in a civil action filed by the Commission in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia against him and the
Better Life Club of America, Inc., an organization he founded and
used to perpetrate a $48 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded
thousands of low- and middle-income investors across the country.

See SEC Lit. Rel. No. 14624 (Sept. 5, 1995).  The freeze order
was designed to preserve the defendants' assets for potential
recovery by the Commission to compensate defrauded investors.

     Taylor's violations of the asset freeze order included
concealing over 25 bank accounts that he used to make cash
withdrawals and write checks to himself for more than $325,000,
and to deposit more than 200 investor checks and money orders
that Judge Hogan had ordered him turn over to a court-appointed
receiver.  In addition, in June 1996, after Judge Hogan had twice
held him in civil contempt and after criminal contempt charges
had been filed against him, Taylor refinanced a house in Fort
Washington, Maryland (which he had purchased with Better Life
Club investor funds), and dissipated more than $62,000 that he
received from the transaction -- another violation of the freeze.

     In his wire fraud plea, Taylor acknowledged that he had
submitted a false application to a mortgage company to obtain the
refinancing of his house.  The application overstated his income
and failed to reveal the existence of the Commission's action
against him.

     Taylor's sentence was the maximum under the federal
sentencing guidelines.  It included an increase for obstruction
of justice based on Judge Hogan's finding that Taylor committed
perjury when he pled guilty last summer.  (Taylor lied to the
Court about what he had done with some of the money he had
illegally obtained from refinancing his house.)  Judge Hogan also
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found that Taylor has not accepted responsibility for his crimes.