Participants in the Madoff investment scandal group of hedge funds owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co, as well as, its parent companies in December 2010, seeking more than $2 billion and alleging that company executives ignored "obvious warning signs" that Madoff was running a fraud. Picard alleged that Tremont failed to do any meaningful review of Madoff's operations or purported investment results, blindly allowing Rye to turn over half its $6 billion in client assets to Madoff and losing half that money when the scheme finally collapsed. The payment of $1 billion to the Madoff truste, provided by Massachusetts Mutual Life as a loan to
BurnLounge the state of South Carolina. Others named in the lawsuit include former BurnLounge CEO Alex Arnold, and two Texas men who promoted BurnLounge similarly to DeBoer. The case went before a Federal Judge in December 2008, and while many of the accusations against the company were dropped by the FTC, on February 29, 2012 an order was issued barring the defendants from operating a pyramid scheme and ordering them to pay some $17 million in damages. In June 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the ruling, declaring BurnLounge to be an illegal pyramid scheme. BurnLounge was considering appeal