COVID vaccinations are continuing to roll out and we can hope to see an end to the pandemic. Regulators are continuing to roll out cases against people and companies that tried to illegally profit from the pandemic. The latest case is against Arrayit Corporation, a life sciences company in Sunnyvale, California. Although a public company, the Securities and Exchange Commission had put a halt to the trading in its shares on public markets in 2015…

One of the challenges with real estate funds is staying within the various requirements of a real estate fund at the beginning of its life and at the end of its life. At start-up, the fund may be sitting on substantial non-real estate while it is starting to invest. Similarly at the end of its life, a fund may be sitting on substantial non-real estate while its real estate investments have been sold off. Then…

Viktor Gjonaj thought he had figured out a way to make money. He was a commercial real estate broker and convinced members of his Albanian-American community in Detroit that he had lucrative real estate investment opportunities. He raised over $26 million. Gjonaj had a promising plan. It involved lottery tickets instead of real estate. Gjonaj diverted his investors’ cash to playing the Michigan Lottery Daily 3 and Daily 4 games. Maybe he had system that…

Eric Malley decided that buying buy hundreds of luxury Manhattan residences on the cheap and leasing them to corporate tenants would be a great way to make money. He would let others in on his plan as investors. He created MG Capital Management Residential Fund III and raised $23 million from about 60 investors. It seemed successful enough that he launched a follow up Fund IV that raised $35 million. You may be asking yourself:…

Goodbye Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. Hello Division of Examination. The Securities and Exchange Commission decided that OCIE, with 23% of the SEC employees, is probably more than an office and elevated it to the level of “Division” by naming it the Division of of Examinations. That puts it on equal name status with Corporate Finance, Investment Management, Trading and Markets, Economic and Risk Analysis and Enforcement. I’m not sure I ever felt that…