Super Sweet Fraud? MTV Show Helps S.E.C. Target Oilman

Like so many of the over-the-top birthday parties that typically appear on "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV, Ariel's celebration took the fairy-tale-princess theme to new heights.

As viewers learned, Ariel's dad was a successful oilman. "I love oil. Oil means shoes and cars and purses," Ariel exclaimed to the camera as she and her father stomped around oil drilling sites in the muddy hills near her home in Campbellsville, Ky. When her father pointed to one of the sites and told viewers that it produced 120 barrels a day, Ariel asked, "How many Louis Vuittons is that?" Her father's answer was "a bunch."

The show typically attracts younger viewers, but this particular episode, shown in February 2007, caught the attention of an entirely different demographic: government regulators.

Ariel's father was Gary M. Milby, a man regulators now say was bilking hundreds of investors across the country out of millions of dollars by offering fraudulent investments in nearly 30 oil and gas limited partnerships with names like "Black Gold Oil No. 6" and "Fort Knox Oil No. 8."

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