SEC Charges Texas CEO with Swindling First Responders

The SEC has charged a Texas businessman and his company for running a scam that cheated scores of retired San Antonio police officers and other first responders out of millions of dollars in retirement savings.

According to the legal complaint, Integrity Aviation & Leasing (IAL) and its CEO Victor Farias raised $14 million from investors and said the funds would be used to purchase engines and other aircraft parts that would then be leased to major airlines. However, they allegedly never purchased any engines and spent only a fraction of investor funds on aircraft parts.

Many of the investors were retirees who had to withdraw the funds from their retirement accounts and deposit them in newly created self-directed IRA accounts to invest in IAL’s promissory notes, the SEC said.

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“Instead of using investor funds to purchase airplane engines for lease, as promised, defendants used investor funds predominantly for unauthorized purposes,” said the complaint.

For example, over a span of six years, Farias and IAL used approximately $6.5 million of the $14 million raised from investors to make bogus interest payments back to investors.

“Encouraged by these regular payments, which made it seem like IAL’s business operations were generating revenue, many investors reinvested their principal back into IAL,” said the complaint. “In fact, these regular quarterly interest payments were sourced almost exclusively from funds invested by other investors.”

Farias also allegedly used $2.7 million of investor funds to invest in a high school friend’s gas station and convenience store, and paid nearly $1 million in “undisclosed and impermissible” sales commissions to IAL’s sales staff for recruiting investors to purchase the firm’s promissory notes.

The SEC also said Farias misappropriated $2.4 million of investor funds for his own personal use, including for meals, entertainment, car expenses, retail purchases, travel, apartment rent, jewelry, and golf and country club expenses.

Farias and IAL told investors that revenues brought in from the business would be used to pay them 10% to 12% in interest annually, and that the promissory notes, which were issued by IAL, were secured by IAL’s assets. However, unbeknownst to the investors, the SEC said Farias had already pledged IAL’s assets as collateral in a separate deal to benefit another company he owned.

“Farias and IAL misrepresented many facets of the offering,” said the complaint, “misspent a significant portion of the investors’ funds, and used only a small portion of the investor funds for their intended purpose.

The complaint also alleges that even after he learned of the SEC’s investigation into him and his company Farias continued to mislead investors. Farias allegedly told at least one investor that he was taking IAL public to pay back investors, and that he was waiting on SEC approval for the IPO. To show purported proof of that, Farias photocopied the SEC’s letterhead from the investigative subpoena he received and used it to falsely claim that he was working with the regulator on an IPO.

The SEC is seeking injunctive relief, disgorgement plus prejudgment interest, and civil penalties.

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Tags: first responders, Fraud, IAL, Integrity Aviation & Leasing, Ponzi Scheme, SEC, self-directed IRA, Victor Lee Farias

New York’s comptroller, who oversees its State Common Retirement Fund, and the Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado (FPPAC) have been appointed co-lead plaintiffs suing Boeing for failing to monitor the safety of its 737 MAX airplanes.

The two, which together hold around $200 million worth of Boeing stock, were chosen by a Delaware judge from a number of different investors that are all seeking damages from the world’s largest aerospace company, according to the complaint. They allege that current and former Boeing board members and executives breached their fiduciary duty by repeatedly ignoring safety issues until they were “no longer even a topic of discussion in board meetings.”

Among the signs that board members purportedly disregarded? In 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded an entire class of airplanes—the 787 Dreamliners—for the first time in more than 30 years after a series of battery fires. In 2014, the National Transportation Safety Board said a Boeing 777 crash in 2013 was due to automated systems Boeing did not fully explain in its training manuals. That same year, an investigation found that Qatar Airways was not accepting 787 Dreamliners because of safety concerns.

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Inattention to safety around the newly automated software resulted in the fatal crashes around the Boeing 737 MAX, the suit alleged. Two crashes not even five months apart killed 346 passengers. In October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 fell into the Java Sea and 189 passengers and crew died. In March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down six minutes after takeoff and left no survivors.

Regardless, Boeing’s then-CEO and Chairman Dennis A. Muilenburg repeatedly denied to board members and the public that there were any safety issues, the suit said. After the 2018 Lion Air crash, the plaintiffs contended that he unfairly collected unvested equity-based compensation of more than $38 million.

That led to what plaintiffs called an “epochal corporate governance catastrophe.”

“Board members and top executives failed in their responsibility to heed the warning signs, leaving Boeing’s finances severely damaged and its once-proud reputation in tatters,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement.

“As co-lead plaintiff with our partners, we look forward to this opportunity to hold the company leadership accountable for their derogation of duty to the company and indifference to public safety,” he added.

“We are determined and ready to pursue claims of malfeasance against the officers and directors of Boeing,” Dan Slack, executive director of the FPPAC, added in a statement.

Other changes that led to the erosion of corporate culture, the suit stated, include the 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, another aerospace company, headed by Harry Stonecipher, who became the new president of Boeing. The suit said that he helped shift the corporate culture to profits-first, moving the corporate headquarters to Chicago, away from its long-time home in Seattle “to escape the influence of the resident flight engineers.”

Boeing declined to comment.

Boeing stock took a while to be affected. But as the pressure on the company mounted, it began sliding in February 2019, when it was at a peak of $440 a share. It stabilized at around $340 per share in February 2020 before the pandemic crushed markets. The stock is now roughly half that level, at just $170.

As of March, the New York pension fund, the third-largest in the nation, listed about $194 billion in assets. The Colorado fund had about $6 billion.