On Tuesday, September 6th, 2022, South Florida resident Johanna M. Gracia reported being accused by the US SEC. According to the agency, the lady was responsible for running a Ponzi Scheme. Gracia is famously known as “Mother Teresa” in the local community but accused as the culprit behind the 196 million USD Ponzi scheme.
The report is further details that the North Lauderdale resident trapped around 15,400 people to invest and generated a staggering amount of capital. The whole transaction was done through her company named MJ Capital Funding LLC.
The company was founded in the year 2022 and is said to focus on acting as a bridge between investors willing to invest and small businesses requiring capital. MJ Capital would act as a “merchant cash advance” (MCA) for these entities.
In April 2021, an imitating website was created similar to MJ Capital, while accusing the company of playing a lead role in a Ponzi scheme. Soon after the instance, Gracia went on to file a case against the fake website charging for defamation.
Meanwhile, the company was consistently indulging in collecting money from investors. This went on until the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped into the case. In August 2021, the agency filed a formal complaint and charged the company for running a Ponzi scheme.
According to the document submitted by the SEC filed on August 9th, 2021, MJ Capital was accused of using the investment collected from investors to fund the company’s insiders and higher officials’ personal spending.
Following the allegations found to be true, the federal judge hearing the case ordered the freezing of corporate assets belonging to Gracia and asked for their receivership.
The case made another development recently when the SEC put up another filing against a board member of the company, Pavel Ruiz. He is accused of playing a significant role behind the scheme. Ruiz with the help of his team of sales agents managed to defraud more than 5,100 investors and raised over 46 million USD. He received approx 7 million USD out of this, the filing added.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/08/us-sec-accused-mother-teresa-of-south-florida-to-run-a-ponzi-scheme/