Equipment Finance Lender Solicited Syndication into Fake Deals for 30 Years

A criminal complaint charging Western-New York-based Woodhill Capital Corp CEO Richard Teplitsky with running a ponzi scheme since 2018 is even more sinister than it looks. That’s because during an interview with the FBI, Teplitsky revealed that he has been offering investment opportunities into fake equipment finance deals for thirty years.

“Teplitsky stated that at some point in time, probably around the mid-1990s, Woodhill did not have enough money coming in from borrowers to make the payments that were due to Woodhill’s investors,” the criminal complaint says. “At that point, Teplitsky started to create fictitious loan documents fraudulently representing to investors that their money was being used to fund loans. In fact, many of the funds being provided by investors were not being used to fund loans to borrowers, but instead were being used to pay the amounts owed to previous investors.”

Despite high interest rates, Teplitsky allegedly said that the risky nature of the deals resulted in a default rate of nearly 50%. He paid the investors anyway.

The scheme snowballed over time with most of the deals over the last ten years being completely fake. As of March 2026 Teplitsky estimated there were 170 – 190 investors that were owed tens of millions of dollars with only 5-10% being a result of real deals. The full complaint can be viewed here.