Documents reveal Efrain Betancourt purchased a product at legendary homes & Hotel
A Miamian implicated of running a $66 million payday loan scheme presumably diverted dealers’ funds to bankroll his magnificent traditions, including the acquisition of a $1.5 million the downtown area condo.
The Securities and trade percentage charged Efrain Betancourt Jr. with violations associated with securities functions in link with fraudulently raising funds from at least 505 South Florida investors, nearly all who tend to be Venezuelan-American. The SEC registered a civil ailment against Betancourt with his pay day loan business Sky party USA on Monday.
The criticism will not establish the condo. But property documents show Betancourt and his awesome partner settled $1.5 million for product 5101 from the 54-story Epic houses & lodge in May 2019. The three-bedroom, three-bathroom unit totals 2,457 sqft. Ugo Colombo’s CMC Group in 2008 developed The legendary, at 200 Biscayne Boulevard Way along side Miami lake.
Beginning in online installment loans New Jersey around January 2016 through March 2020, Betancourt allegedly ended up selling naive buyers promissory records that he stated is accustomed create payday advance loan, and presumably assured all of them comes back up to 120 per cent in per year, based on the problem. The short term financial loans happened to be for small amounts, usually from $10,000 to $150,000, to consumers with poor or no credit.
Miamian recharged in payday loans design allegedly splurged on $2M downtown condo
The investment opportunity dispersed mainly by word of mouth area in Southern Fl’s Venezuelan-American neighborhood. Even though it is actually confusing whether Betancourt is actually Venezuelan, an SEC news release claims that it is usual for cons to make the most of a common nationality to achieve depend on.
a€?Betancourt pitched the financial in heavens Group as a fantastic opportunity for members of the Venezuelan immigrant community to create financial investment money,a€? in accordance with the issue.
About 20 percent on the cash increased was applied as Betancourt vowed. While doing so, $12 million presumably is siphoned keeping heavens cluster run, and $9.8 million allegedly was used to pay income into 52 telemarketers that were maybe not authorized brokers, the SEC states. Most of these commissions weren’t revealed to people.
Among the fibs Betancourt presumably advised people ended up being that heavens class got a $70 million loan portfolio, in an effort to show off this as a protected options. A minumum of one individual ended up being told the guy endured receive a $31 million windfall, the SEC says.
Whenever scheme began to unravel in 2019, Betancourt allegedly told people their particular repayments comprise suspended considering an issue together with the provider managing financing for Sky class. The conspiracy presumably changed into a Ponzi scheme, in line with the ailment, with no less than $19.2 million of investors’ funds used to pay back different traders.
Betancourt utilized at the very least $2.9 million of dealers’ money to relish a longevity of luxury, the SEC charges. This included their wedding at a chateau throughout the French Riviera, holidays to the Caribbean and Disney destinations, and focus on their personal Piper airplane.
The 32-year-old’s friends in addition benefited, as $3.6 million got transferred to all of them for no noticeable legitimate factor, the criticism states.
Betancourt is not necessarily the earliest Southern Floridian charged in a fraud that included diverting resources into the region’s luxury real estate market.
In-may, Dusko Bruer was actually sentenced to two years in prison for evading taxation and stashing $6.3 million from his lucrative agriculture devices providers in overseas profile. Bruer splurged $1.6 million on a three-bedroom Lake value seashore quarters in the Intracoastal Waterway for their then-girlfriend.
Bruer’s attorneys at the time said Bruer decrease target to a a€?playboy life,a€? but that finally he had legitimately obtained their cash, owned as much as their problems and pleaded bad.
Within the most memorable connections between property and fraud plans, a bright Isles Beach Porsche Concept Tower product allegedly was utilized as payment to just one from the money launderers billed in 2018 in a $1.2 billion system to embezzle from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA.