Litigation Release No. 25002 / December 31, 2020
Securities and Exchange Commission v. DeAndre P. Sears et al., Case No. 20-cv-03114 (M.D. Fla filed December 31, 2020)
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against DeAndre P. Sears and MASears LLC d/b/a Picasso Group, an entity he controlled and operated, with registration violations for unlawfully selling securities of Florida-based real estate firm EquiAlt LLC to retail investors. The SEC previously filed an enforcement action against EquiAlt LLC, its CEO Brian Davison, and its Managing Director Barry Rybicki on February 11, 2020, in connection with the alleged scheme.
According to the SEC's complaint, between 2014 and 2020, Sears directly and indirectly, through the use of third-party agents, sold at least $25 million of EquiAlt's securities to more than 145 largely unaccredited, unsophisticated, and elderly retail investors located in 25 states. During that period, Sears was identified in EquiAlt private placement memoranda as Managing Director of Investments, President of Business Development and Marketing, or Vice President of Investor Relations. Sears, through Picasso Group, received approximately $3.5 million in transaction-based sales commissions from EquiAlt, despite neither being registered as broker dealers. The complaint alleges that beginning in approximately 2016, EquiAlt was actually operating a Ponzi scheme during which it raised more than $170 million from approximately 1,100 investors in 35 states.