Yahoo Finance A Broward woman who called herself ‘Mother Teresa’ admits a $190 million Ponzi scheme
Pompano Beach’s MJ Capital Funding once claimed on its website blog that president Johanna Garcia “is often referred to as ‘Mother Teresa’ in her community” for helping “hard working individuals” make money and getting small businesses money needed to operate.
Soon, Garcia can be referred to as “federal inmate” after admitting she led the ripoff of $190 million from individuals, very little of which went to businesses that needed operating capital. MJ Capital’s website now kicks to the law firm handling the company’s receivership and trying to find money for investors victimized by the Ponzi scheme.
And after Garcia and her cronies got busted by the FBI, they fired up a few new companies and ran a $3 million Ponzi scheme.
Garcia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept 20 by U.S. District Court Judge Jose E. Martinez.
When she finds out her prison term, she’ll become the third person to be sentenced for the MJ Capital fraud.
Pembroke Pines’ Christian Gonzalez’s release is scheduled for Sept. 6 from Pensacola federal prison after doing just over 10 months for money laundering. Up in Allenwood, Pennsylvania’s federal prison, Pavel Ruiz Hernandez serves his nine-year, two-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Ruiz filed a motion in April for a court-appointed attorney to help with his motion alleging ineffective counsel.
Ruiz’s motion met rejection.
Garcia’s MJ Capital gang pulled their $190 million scheme out of a space in an $8 million Pompano Beach strip mall.
The MJ Capital Funding Ponzi scheme
State records say in 2017 Garcia moved the year-old MJ Tax Services and More from her North Lauderdale home to the strip mall at 2754 W. Atlantic Blvd. She registered MJ Capital Funding, operating out of the same office, with the state in June 2020.
Via its website and social media, MJ Capital Funding claimed to sell merchant cash advances (MCA), short-term loans that are to a business what a payday loan is to an individual.
Get your #smallbusiness boosted to meet your growth needs with us! #growthmindset #constuction #florida pic.twitter.com/H49j19be2w
— MJ Capital Funding (@MJCapitalFundi1) June 30, 2021
If a Broward-based company selling merchant cash advances sounds familiar, that also describes 1 Global Capital, Carl Ruderman’s Hallandale Beach-based company. And, as convictions began to pile up in the $285 million 1 Global Capital fraud in 2020, Garcia accelerated the MJ Capital Funding fraud.
As Garcia’s guilty plea says, “MJ Capital funded only a relatively small numbers of MCAs and failed to earn the profits it needed to pay the investor returns and principal promised investors. As a result, Garcia and her co-conspirators paid investor returns by paying existing investors using new investor funds.”
That’s a definition of a Ponzi scheme.
Garcia and her pals, the guilty plea admits, “misappropriated millions of dollars of investor funds to pay for, among other things, personal expenses and investments,” facts they didn’t share with investors who were told their money became MCAs.
Even after MJ Capital got busted by the FBI in the fall of 2021, Garcia and her economic gang demonstrated their devotion to the scam.
The MJ Capital criminals metamorphosed into New Beginning Global Funding; New Beginning Capital Funding; Lion Heart Capital Group; GMR Remodeling; and Group Management. They used these entities, which weren’t registered with the Florida Division of Corporations as required by law, to seduce $3.2 million to $4 million from at least 20 investors, according to Garcia’s guilty plea.
“Garcia and her co-conspirators told investors that their money would be used to fund general contractors who worked on commercial and residential properties through merchant cash advance loans,” the guilty plea said. “Bank records show that there were little to no merchant cash advance activity, and the money raised was use to pay off previous investors.”
Now, MJ Capital’s in the hands of court-appointed receiver Bernice Lee of the Kozyak Tropin Throckmorton law firm.
The FBI’s Miami office compiled the evidence against Garcia with help from the SEC’s Miami office and Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Roger Cruz and Marx Calderon handled, respectively, the prosecution and forfeiture.
