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July 30, 2020 at 05:30 PM
A former broker/RIA and his firm defrauded investors out of more than $14 million as part of a scheme involving the offer and sale of purportedly secured promissory notes that targeted mainly retired San Antonio Police Department officers and other first responders, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Defendant Victor Lee Farias, 46, of Fair Oaks, Texas, was previously registered as an RIA and broker, most recently at Capital Guardian in San Antonio, in 2012-2013, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck website. Farias did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio, the SEC claimed Victor Lee Farias and his company, Integrity Aviation & Leasing, informed investors their money would be used by IAL to buy aircraft engines and other aviation assets that would be leased or sold to major airlines and that revenue from that business would be used to pay investors interest on their investments at the rate of 10%-12% a year.
“In fact, Farias and IAL misrepresented many facets of the offering, misspent a significant portion of the investors’ funds, and used only a small portion of the investor funds for their intended purpose,” the complaint said.
Specifically, Farias and IAL used about $6.5 million of the $14 million raised to make Ponzi-like payments to investors, invested about $2.7 million in a friend’s gas station and convenience store project, and paid almost $1 million in undisclosed and impermissible sales commissions to IAL’s sales staff for their successful efforts in recruiting investors to buy IAL promissory notes, the SEC alleged.
