Texas Oil and Gas Investment Fraud Lawyer
Mark A. Alexander, P.C. — Dallas, Texas. Recovering investments for defrauded oil and gas investors since 2007.
“You’ve worked hard for your money. When investing, you deserve truth not fraud.”
— Mark A. Alexander
A Record Built on Recovering Investors’ Money
Mark Alexander has practiced law for more than 40 years. Since 2007, his practice has concentrated on oil and gas investment fraud, and in that time Mark A. Alexander, P.C. (“the Firm”) has represented more than 210 investors throughout the United States who were defrauded of their hard-earned money by unscrupulous oil and gas promoters.
The Firm’s work does not stop at obtaining a judgment. From the first meeting forward, every case is built around a single practical question: how does the client actually recover money? That focus has produced substantial judgments and settlements for the Firm’s clients — and, just as importantly, sustained work to collect what the courts have awarded.
Mark Alexander holds Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent rating, the highest rating available to an individual lawyer for legal ability and ethical standards. He is a Life Member of both the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, memberships limited to attorneys who have obtained verdicts and settlements at the million-dollar and multi-million-dollar levels. Importantly, less than 1% of the attorneys across the United States have been admitted into the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum.
How Oil and Gas Investment Schemes Work
Texas sits at the center of American oil and gas production, and legitimate operators raise capital from private investors every day. That legitimacy is exactly what fraudulent promoters borrow. A typical scheme begins with a polished presentation: a private placement memorandum, a lease map, production projections, and a confident story about proven reserves or a drilling program that cannot miss.
Behind the presentation, the details often tell a different story. Promoters buy lead lists and work the phones (by way of a phone bank), pressing investors to commit before the “remaining units” are gone. Working interests and royalty interests are sold on projections that most honest engineers would not sign. Sales commissions and promoter fees — sometimes consuming a third or more of the money raised — go undisclosed. Many times, investor funds are commingled across projects, and in the worst cases new investors’ money is used to pay “production returns” to earlier investors, the defining mark of a Ponzi scheme. Wells that were pitched as ready to produce turn out to be marginal, plugged, or never drilled at all.
Most oil and gas investment interests offered to the public are securities under Texas and federal law, no matter what the promoter calls them. When a promoter misrepresents or conceals material facts, or sells unregistered securities, defrauded investors have legal remedies — including rescission of the investment and recovery of damages. The Firm’s practice is devoted to pursuing those remedies.
Who We Represent
The Firm’s clients have included business owners, attorneys, and retired professional athletes. That list makes an important point: oil and gas fraud does not prey only on the inexperienced. These schemes are engineered to persuade successful, financially sophisticated people, and they are polished enough to succeed. Being defrauded is not a mark of carelessness — it is the intended result of a professional deception.
Clients come to the Firm from across Texas and throughout the United States. Wherever the investor lives, these cases tend to run through Texas: the promoters, the operators, the wells, and the money are frequently here, and Texas courts and Texas law frequently govern the fight to get that money back.
Our Oil and Gas Fraud Practice
The Firm’s oil and gas fraud practice is organized around the ways investors are actually harmed — and the ways they recover. Each area below is covered in depth on its own page:
- Nationwide Investment Fraud — representing defrauded investors from all over the U.S. It is worth noting that Texas is where so many of these fraudulent offerings originate.
- Ponzi Schemes — recognizing, unwinding, and recovering from schemes that pay early investors with later investors’ money, including receivership and bankruptcy-trustee proceedings.
- Working Interest and Royalty Fraud — fraudulent sales of fractional well interests and royalty interests, the industry’s most common retail scheme.
- Securities Fraud Recovery — claims under the Texas Securities Act and related law, including rescission and damages for unregistered and fraudulent offerings.
- How Investors Recover Money After Investment Fraud — a practical guide to the recovery process, from investigation through judgment and collection.
- Oil and Gas Fraud FAQs — direct answers to the questions defrauded investors ask most.
What Makes Oil and Gas Fraud Cases Different
Investment fraud is always about deception, but oil and gas fraud comes wrapped in an industry with its own language, its own documents, and its own economics — and promoters count on that complexity to hide the fraud. Reserve reports, authorization-for-expenditure statements, joint interest billings, division orders, completion reports: to most investors, and to most lawyers, these documents are a foreign language. To a promoter, they are camouflage.
Litigating these cases well means reading that language fluently. It means knowing what a legitimate drilling program’s cost structure looks like, so an inflated one stands out. It means knowing which records the Texas Railroad Commission keeps on every well in the state — permits, completions, production volumes, plugging reports — and how those public records can contradict a promoter’s glossy projections line by line. It means understanding how money is supposed to flow from the wellhead to the interest owner, so the moment it was diverted can be traced and proved.
The Firm’s practice has been concentrated in these cases since 2007. That concentration is why the Firm can look at an offering package and see, quickly, whether the story the promoter told matches the story the documents tell.
What to Expect When You Contact the Firm
The first conversation is a candid one. You will describe the investment, and you will get a direct assessment: whether the facts suggest fraud, what remedies may be available, what the obstacles are, and — honestly — whether pursuing the claim makes economic sense. Not every loss is fraud, and not every fraud claim is worth bringing; you deserve to know which situation you are in before you spend your hard-earned money pursuing it.
If the Firm takes the case, the work follows a deliberate path: a full review of the offering documents and your payment records; investigation of the promoter, the operator, and the wells through public and regulatory records; identification of every viable claim and every viable defendant, including those with assets worth pursuing; and then a strategy built for the specific case — whether that points toward an early demand and settlement, a receivership or bankruptcy proceeding already underway, or litigation prepared for summary judgment or a trial. At each stage, you will know what is happening and why.
How the Firm Approaches These Cases
Every engagement begins with investigation: the offering documents, the promoter’s history, the well records, and — above all — where the money went. Oil and gas fraud cases are won on documents, and the Firm prepares each case as though it will be decided on the paper record.
That preparation has a purpose. Where the record allows, the Firm positions cases to be decided by the court on summary judgment — a ruling that the evidence is so clear no trial is needed. In Steve McMaster, et al. v. Rock Wall Oil Company, et al. (160th Judicial District Court, Dallas County, Texas, Cause No. DC-07-00232-H), that approach produced a judgment of $1.3 million for the Firm’s clients on summary judgment. Most cases resolve by settlement before trial, and thorough preparation is precisely what drives favorable settlements: a defendant who sees a well-built record has every reason to resolve the case.
Depending on the facts, remedies may include rescission of the investment, recovery of actual damages, less any revenue received, plus court costs, interest, attorney fees and, where the evidence supports it, exemplary damages. Where promoters have moved or hidden assets, which may be a violation of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, the work continues past judgment into collection — because a judgment that is never collected does not make a client whole.
Fees
In nearly all cases, the Firm works on an hourly basis with a retainer. In rare cases, the Firm may agree to a hybrid arrangement — a reduced hourly rate combined with a percentage of the recovery. Every fee arrangement is set out in a written agreement before the work begins, so the client knows exactly how the engagement is structured.
Frequently Asked Questions
Limitations periods vary by claim, and the safest course is to act within three years of the sale; some claims may extend to four years. The practical answer is simpler: the clock is running, evidence gets harder to gather with time, and promoters’ assets have a way of disappearing. If you suspect fraud, do not wait to have the investment reviewed.
Yes. The Firm has represented more than 210 investors throughout the United States. Because so many of these offerings are organized and sold from Texas, out-of-state investors regularly find that their claims belong in Texas courts — which is exactly where the Firm practices.
Nearly all cases are handled on an hourly basis with a retainer, with a written fee agreement in place before work begins. In rare cases a hybrid arrangement may be available. You will get a candid assessment of the claim and the likely scope of the work at the initial consultation, before you commit to anything.
In most cases offered to passive investors, yes — working interests, royalty interests, and program units sold to investors who rely on the promoter’s efforts are generally securities under Texas and federal law, regardless of the label the promoter used. That matters, because securities law provides some of the strongest remedies available to defrauded investors, including rescission. The analysis is fact-specific, and it is one of the first questions the Firm answers when reviewing an investment.
Sometimes — oil and gas is a genuinely risky business, and an honest well that comes in dry is not always evidence of fraud. The question is what you were told, and what you were not told, when you invested. If reserves were overstated, costs were inflated, commissions were concealed, your money was used for something other than the program you bought into, or the “returns” you received were other investors’ money, that is not underperformance. Distinguishing a bad outcome from a deceptive offering is exactly what the case review is for.
Send everything the promoter gave you and everything you signed: the offering materials, subscription agreements, well reports, account statements, correspondence, emails, and records of your payments. It is very helpful for a prospective client to organize the information he or she sends to the Firm, as it makes it easier for the Firm to appreciate the investment.
Contact Mark A. Alexander, P.C.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss your legal issue.
Mark A. Alexander, P.C.
The Gild
8150 North Central Expressway, 10th Floor
Dallas, Texas 75206
Phone: (972) 544-6968
Fax: (972) 421-1500
Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please do not send confidential or time-sensitive information through this form.
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