Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s Securities Division ordered David Gentile, Jeffry Schneider, Jeffrey Lash and their companies to show cause why restitution of more than $24 million should not be paid after allegedly defrauding 255 Missouri investors and tens of thousands more across the U.S.
A news release says the division alleges that between 2013 and 2018, Gentile, Schneider and Lash raised more than $1.8 billion by luring individuals to invest with misleading promises of reliable returns. The three men and their companies – GPB Capital Holdings LLC, Ascendant Capital LLC and Ascendant Alternative Strategies LLC – relied on a Ponzi-style scheme for financing, using new investors’ capital to pay returns to prior investors.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The founder of a New York money manager and two associates were criminally charged on Thursday with running a $1.8 billion Ponzi-like fraud where thousands of victims were falsely promised steady returns on their investments.
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David Gentile, the chief executive of GPB Capital Holdings LLC, was accused of cheating more than 17,000 retail investors taken in by promises of consistent 8% annual returns even as the firm was hemorrhaging losses.
Authorities said Manhattan-based GPB told investors their payments would be funded by revenue from the firm’s holdings, including a group of car dealerships, when in fact a “significant” portion came from money from newer investors.
GPB Capital Founder and CEO Indicted for Alleged Fraud In a parallel action to the DOJ’s, the Securities and Exchange Commission also charged GPB and a broker/dealer that marketed its securities with running an allegedly Ponzi-like scheme that raised over $1.7 billion.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment Thursday of three individuals affiliated with GPB Capital, a New York-based private placement shop, with securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy in a scheme that raised over $1.7 billion from investors. GPB’s owner and CEO David Gentile, Jeffry Schneider, owner of GPB’s placement agent Ascendant Capital, and Jeffrey Lash, a former managing partner at GPB, have been arrested, each facing up to 20 years in prison.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Washington D.C., Feb. 4, 2021
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged three individuals and their affiliated entities with running a Ponzi-like scheme that raised over $1.7 billion from securities issued by a New York-based asset management firm and registered investment adviser, GPB Capital. The SEC also charged GPB Capital with violating the whistleblower protection laws.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that David Gentile, the owner and CEO of GPB Capital, and Jeffry Schneider, the owner of GPB Capital’s placement agent Ascendant Capital, lied to investors about the source of money used to make an 8% annualized distribution payment to investors. According to the complaint, these defendants along with Ascendant Alternative Strategies, which marketed GPB Capital’s investments, told investors that the distribution payments were paid exclusively with monies generated by GPB Capital’s portfolio companies. As alleged