Articles by deBanked Staff
MJ Capital Funding Had More Than 5,000 Investors
October 8, 2021Investigations carried out by the Receiver for Pompano-based MJ Capital Funding, have revealed that the number of investors in the alleged ponzi is more than double than originally believed.
In August, the SEC successfully persuaded a judge to place MJ Capital in Receivership after providing a convincing argument that the company was engaged in an active securities fraud and that the assets should be preserved. At the time, the SEC estimated that there were as many as 2,150 investors and that the amount raised ranged somewhere between $70M and $129M.
Now with better access to the internal workings of the business, the Receiver says that there are actually more than 5,000 investors and that they expect this number to increase, according to recent court filings.
Also revealed is that more than 400 individuals were tasked with recruiting investors.
“While MJ Capital claimed to use investor funds to provide small business loans called Merchant Cash Advances, the Receiver’s investigation to date has revealed virtually no evidence of legitimate business activity involving the funding and collection of Merchant Cash Advances which proceeds could have funded the payments to investors,” the Receiver said in official papers.
The case is ongoing.
More than 3,200 people have come out in support of MJ Capital Funding’s CEO, believing that she is also a victim in what has befallen the company.
Sonia Alvelo, CEO of Latin Financial Will Appear on deBanked TV
October 6, 2021
Sonia Alvelo, CEO of Latin Financial, will join Sean Murray live on deBanked TV on Thursday at approximately 12:15pm EST. Latin Financial is based in Newington, CT and Alvelo has contributed valuable insight to deBanked over the years, particularly on the Puerto Rican small business finance market.
Anyone can tune in to debanked.com/tv/ for free without any registration to watch.
Who is Latin Financial?
A family owned and operated brokerage firm with a variety of backgrounds and expertise. We’re here to help all of our clients with their business’ unique financial needs. No loan is too big or too small for us; our goal is to simply help create a positive future for all of our clients. Here at Latin Financial, we understand that working capital can be difficult to obtain. With banks approving fewer and fewer loans, borrowing for your business’ future can be frightening and uncertain, especially in today’s economy. With Latin Financial you’re in good hands.
Latin Financial has over 10 years of business financial experience between its advisors.
We are at the forefront of this quickly changing economy and we work closely with our clients and investors because we are fully committed to meeting and exceeding expectations. We also believe in keeping our services affordable, working around your budget while never charging fees.
We are proud that so many of our clients have repeatedly turned to us for guidance and assistance with their business capital needs. We work hard to earn their loyalty every day.
MCA Skeptic Rohit Chopra Confirmed by Senate to Head CFPB
October 1, 2021
More than eight months after deBanked announced that FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra would be the next head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his appointment has finally been confirmed by the Senate.
The confirmation of Chopra is notable given the agency’s objectives to collect data from small business finance companies and the fact that Chopra himself has been very vocal about merchant cash advances in particular.
One year ago, in his capacity as an FTC commissioner, he referred to the industry as “opaque” with “pay-day style” products whose structure “may be a sham.”
In an interview with NBC around the same time, he used stronger language, saying that he was “looking for a systemic solution that makes sure they can all be wiped out before they do more damage.”
Chopra knows his way around the CFPB. He worked for the agency when it first started in 2010 and was there for five years as the Assistant Director & Student Loan Ombudsman. He later moved to the FTC as a commissioner and now returns back at the CFPB in the director’s seat.
New York DFS: The Commercial Financing Disclosure Requirement is Happening
September 21, 2021
New York State’s financial regulator announced that the commercial financing disclosure law is moving forward as planned for the Jan 1, 2022 deadline.
To prepare those that will be subject to it, Acting Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris released a copy of proposed regulations that will be open to comment for 60 days.
Its length, 45 pages, demonstrates the complexity that compliance will require. Anyone involved in commercial or small business financing should take the careful time to read it.
“The Department of Financial Services will then review all received comments and issue a final regulation,” the announcement says.
deBanked Mints NFTs, Puts First Magazine Cover on the Ethereum Blockchain
September 12, 2021
deBanked has been forever etched into the Ethereum blockchain.
The first print magazine cover ever published by deBanked has been turned into an NFT. Over the weekend, deBanked deployed its own NFT smart contract on to Ethereum and minted several NFTs including the deBanked logo and the Broker Fair 2021 logo. The exercise was prompted by a deBanked TV discussion about athletes selling “digitally-signed” memorabilia.
“I think it’s important that as we talk about this technology, that we fundamentally understand how it all works,” said deBanked President Sean Murray. “There are some drag-and-drop style NFT ‘makers’ online, but I thought that would defeat the purpose, so I did it all through the Terminal. Once I got our NFT smart contract on the Ethereum mainnet, I minted a handful of NFTs with it.”
Murray, who started using and mining crypto in 2014, has offered Bitcoin as a deBanked customer payment option for more than 6 years.
Although the NFT contract and token IDs are visible on etherscan.io, images themselves are not. Users need a particular wallet or app that is equipped to display NFTs.
“It’s a somewhat strange system in which these tokens basically contain metadata with a URL to where the images are hosted somewhere else online. So you need something that’s interpreting the metadata,” Murray said.
Using a mobile wallet like MetaMask can accomplish this.
Murray added that there’s actual costs involved too.
“A lot of people are joking about how someone paid $1.3 million for a picture of a rock,” he said, “but it does cost money by way of eth to mint an NFT. It could cost someone more than $100 just to put a single NFT on Ethereum so selling an NFT, even if it’s something silly, could fetch a significant price by virtue of the high transaction fees on the network.”
Network fees are a known obstacle. NFTs on the sports star operated Autograph.io are minted on the Polygon blockchain where costs are lower, for example. Autograph boasts that anyone can buy “digitally signed autographs” from celebrities like Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, and Wayne Gretzky.
Minting an NFT or two or three, or as many as one wants, is as simple as pressing a button once a proper script is written. Interested collectors would have to establish just how genuinely or intimately signed an autograph is and how rare it is. Is it an agent executing a script? Is it the celebrity pressing a button? Or could it be that the image itself is unique and that the seller drew or signed it with their own hand in Adobe Photoshop or something similar? As the mysteriousness of the technology becomes more understood, the market may become more cost normalized.
Murray says that the smart contract is still accessible so that there is the potential to mint more deBanked-originated NFTs in the future and that deBanked NFTs can also be sent to others that have Ethereum-equipped wallets.
“I think 2021 is as good a year as ever for Broker Fair in particular to be memorialized into Ethereum,” Murray said. “What better way than to be on the forefront of technology in the commercial finance space?”
MJ Capital Funding CEO Consents to Asset Freeze
September 9, 2021The primary defendant in the MJ Capital Funding case agreed to an extended asset freeze, court records show. Her consent is not an admission of guilt to the civil charges. The SEC has already sufficiently demonstrated its strength of prevailing in the case, which is why the judge ordered the companies be placed into receivership from the outset.
The consent order, entered on the 8th, covers 9 bank accounts held at both Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, in addition to ten credit cards. MJ Capital’s CEO agreed to live off of income derived from two unrelated businesses known as MJ Remodeling and MJ Realty to the tune of $72,800 a year combined. That could change, however, if the SEC determines those businesses are also connected with the alleged scheme. $100,000 that was paid to her lawyer in advance will stand and can be used for her legal defense.
The only unusual bank record disclosed in the papers is a purported account at a small cryptocurrency hedge fund.
Nearly 2,900 people have signed an online petition voicing support for MJ Capital accused’s CEO.
The Receiver is providing regular court filing updates at: https://kttlaw.com/mjcapital/
Aquila Services Inc. Has Ceased Operations
September 9, 2021Aquila Services Inc, a data-driven small business cash flow management platform, ceased operations sometime early last year, deBanked has learned. The company had been trying to pivot even before the pandemic began. CEO and Founder Taariq Lewis, who had spoken about AI and machine learning at some length to us in 2018, updated the company’s website with the bad news.
Aquila is now closed for business and we have shut down our servers after a three year run. Thanks to all our 9,688 customers and our many investors for allowing us to provide cash flow analysis for small businesses.
If you are seeking business funding, please be sure to check our partners at Rapid Finance, Credibly, Kabbage, and others for access to capital and please check with Home Depot for discounts on construction equipment.
Lewis is now listed as a co-founder of UniFi DAO, according to LinkedIn.
Knight Capital Technology to Play Continuing SBA Loan Role at Ready Capital Corporation
September 7, 2021
Ever since Ready Capital’s name arrived on the big stage for its leading role in the nation’s PPP lending, the company has continued to be very active in small business lending. They completed round 2 of the PPP program with $2.2B in loans to more than 72,000 small businesses. For comparison’s sake, that’s twice what PayPal contributed, who provided $1B to 43,000 businesses.
Ready Capital is the #1 non-bank in the nation in 7(a) SBA loan originations this year so far, according to John Moser, President of the company’s SBA lending division, and is #7 in the entire SBA lending industry nationwide.
Some of the technology behind their success can be attributed to Knight Capital, the company Ready acquired back in 2019. Knight has enabled the company to roll out offerings of SBA loans under $350,000, which it is using to grow its already impressive marketshare.
Speaking about Knight, Ready Capital CEO Thomas Capasse said in the Q2 earnings call, the “[Knight] investment will be levered into more technology affinity-based expansion of the SBA business.”
Overall, the company is optimistic. “Ready Capital is off to a strong start in 2021,” Capasse said during the call. “We have accomplished much in the first quarter of the year with our small balance commercial or SBC, CRE lending operations and Small Business Administration or SBA 7(a) lending businesses, posting record originations, including high volume in round two of the Paycheck Protection Program or PPP.”
Knight’s merchant cash advance business is combined with its small business lending division for quarterly reporting purposes so its individual stats are not easily ascertainable. The company still touts “same day business funding” on its website.
