{"id":5951,"date":"2016-03-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/institutionalinvestorsecuritiesblog.blawgcloud.com\/2016\/03\/sec_files_fraud_charges_agains"},"modified":"2022-05-17T14:15:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T19:15:21","slug":"sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/","title":{"rendered":"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, Aequitas Capital Management, has been in the headlines recently in the wake of news that the investment firm was letting go of almost all of its employees because of financial problems.<\/p>\n<p>According to the regulator, the Oregon-based investment group and three of its executives tried to hide their financial woes while raising over $350M from investors. Meantime, investors were allegedly fooled into believing that they were putting their money in transportation, education, and health-care related investments when really their funds were going toward trying to save the firm. Earlier investors were purportedly paid with the money of newer investors, which is a trademark of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.securities-fraud-attorneys.com\">Ponzi scam<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The SEC\u2019s complaint contends that CEO Robert Jesenik and EVP Brian Oliver knew about Aequitas financial problems but kept soliciting investors so they could continue bringing in money to cover the firm\u2019s expenses, including redemptions and interest payments to earlier investors, and try to keep the business afloat. Ex-COO and CFO N. Scott Gillis is accused of hiding the fact that the firm was insolvent. He purportedly knew that Oliver and Jesenik were still soliciting investors.<\/p>\n<p>Meantime, Aequitas\u2019s top executives continued to make \u201clucrative\u201d salaries as they brought more investors into a \u201closing venture.\u201d They traveled in private jets and paid for golf outings and dinners for potential investors. They also persuaded prior investors to bring in more funds.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/#more-5951\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, Aequitas Capital Management, has been in the headlines recently in the wake of news that the investment firm was letting go of almost all of its employees because of financial problems. According to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3760,3761],"tags":[2839],"class_list":["post-5951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sec-enforcement","category-securities-and-exchange-commis","tag-aequitas"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; March 10, 2016<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, &#8212; March 10, 2016\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; March 10, 2016\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, &#8212; March 10, 2016\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Shepherd Smith Edwards &amp; Kantas, LLP\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; March 10, 2016","description":"The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, &#8212; March 10, 2016","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; March 10, 2016","twitter_description":"The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. One of the affiliates, &#8212; March 10, 2016","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Shepherd Smith Edwards &amp; Kantas, LLP","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/"},"author":{"name":"Shepherd Smith Edwards &amp; Kantas, LLP","@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0240e0754684b69f7d6a7de1b9f1431"},"headline":"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam","datePublished":"2016-03-10T06:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2022-05-17T19:15:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/"},"wordCount":525,"keywords":["Aequitas"],"articleSection":["SEC Enforcement","Securities and Exchange Commission"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/","url":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/sec-files-fraud-charges-agains-2\/","name":"SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Aequitas Management Over Ponzi Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; March 10, 2016","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-03-10T06:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2022-05-17T19:15:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0240e0754684b69f7d6a7de1b9f1431"},"description":"The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Aequitas Management LLC and four affiliates allegedly bilked over 1,500 investors. 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