A villager who runs a financial firm under the cloud of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation reportedly lured clients with the promise of an insurance policy he said would protect their investment.

John Gissas of Retirement Evolution Group LLC of Wildwood is accused of raising funds for the financing of the peer, whose owners have provided “opportunistic loans” to small business owners across America – some at interest rates of up to 400%, according to the SEC filing. The village resident of Gilchrist has raised more than $ 5.4 million from at least 62 investors for financing through the offering and sale of promissory notes.

Gissas, whose office is at Freedom Plaza on State Road 44 near Brownwood, was named in July in the SEC complaint. The SEC locked him out of the office and froze his assets. Gissas is said to be back in business and its outstanding assets have been thawed. Its au pair assets remain frozen.

United States District Court Judge Rodolfo Ruiz put the au pair funding litigation on trial on August 30, 2021 in Miami. The parties estimate that the trial will last two to three weeks.

SEC investigators attempted to unravel Par Funding’s grim finances. For example, Par Funding hasn’t reconciled any of its bank accounts for 2020 and many for 2019. The company apparently doesn’t have audited financial statements. As a result, it was difficult to assess the company’s financial situation, the quality of its merchant cash advance portfolio and to restart operations. It appears that the company hasn’t done much to analyze the financial strength of the traders it has loaned money to. Some agreements do not include the correct merchant name. The guarantees were often not described precisely.

Gissas, who liked wooing investors over a meal at The Villages restaurants, tried to reassure potential investors that an insurance policy would protect them if business owners couldn’t pay off high-interest loans. .

Villager Rick Woolf is a former Deputy US Attorney at the Department of Justice who has followed the Gissas case and has spoken with villagers who invested with Gissas.

“The majority of the investors I spoke with said that Gissas had shown them an insurance policy against merchants defaulting on high interest loans made to them. Most investors said this was the major factor in their decision to invest in au pair financing through Retirement Evolution Group. The SEC determined that there had never been insurance, ”Woolf said.

You can find more information on the case at https://parfundingreceivership.com

Woolf can be contacted at [email protected] or (954) 816-8699.