Hvizdzak Capital Management Charged With Fraud By SEC

Hvizdzak Capital Management Charged With Fraud By SEC

Wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy are the charges leveled against brothers Shane Hvizdzak and Sean Hvizdzak, who has been accused by federal regulators of making away with over $30 million in investor money through a cryptocurrency-based investment scheme. They are due to appear in federal court. The seven million is left in the scheme that has been frozen by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

That leaves $24 million as the unaccounted and potentially lost, amount, out of the $31 million raised by Hvizdzak Capital Management, the investment company that they formed in early 2019, ostensibly to trade in digital assets.

Are you a victim of investment Hvizdzak Capital Management fraud? Contact Haselkorn & Thibaut, P.A. at 1-800-856-3352 for a free consultation on recovering your losses.

The Hvizdzak Capital Management case

The SEC filing in March has accused the brothers of misappropriating ‘tens of millions’ was made after the company and its activities had drawn the attention of federal regulators. The accusations include using investor money for their personal use and lying about the performance of the business to lure more investors.

Shane Hvizdzak is on record for having claimed growth rates of 101% and 93% in Q3 and Q4 of 2019, during an investor pitch session in March 2020, even though both quarters had been loss-making ones for the fund. Against a bank balance of @2.2 million, financial statements have been issued claiming assets of $157 million.

The government is seeking forfeiture of Bitcoins and other digital currencies, two Rolex watches, property in Bradford, and $341,000 in cash.

History of the Hvizdzak brothers

Shane, who is 33 years old, lives in Bradford, and Sean, 35, a lawyer, in St. Mary’s. Bradford, a town of 8,000 residents, with a similar number in adjacent townships, is where they spent their early years too. They were recognized as star athletes during their growing-up years. Shane has taught at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and at St. Bonaventure University, and Sean has done legal work for the city government of Bradford has been noted and reported by the Bradford Era as recently as last year.

Bradford Mayor James McDonald remarked, “In a small city like Bradford, Pennsylvania, everyone knows everyone. That fact makes what the Hvizdzak brothers did especially painful. The countless acts of betrayal and theft are intimate.”

Many of their alleged victims are people known to them.

While noting that the city’s annual budget of $11 million was a fraction of the purported losses faced by investors, Mayor McDonald added, “There are some people that have gotten cleaned out and there are some people that have to readjust their retirement expectations. These people, acted off referrals. It’s not like they were just meeting with complete strangers.”

A particularly poignant case is that of one unnamed couple who invested $10 million with them in May 2020. The same day $8 million was wired to Shane Hvizdzak’s personal bank account.

What they have to say

Efrem Grail, representing the company as well as Shane Hvizdzak, said that he was in the process of reviewing the indictment.

David Berardinelli, Sean Hvizdzak’s lawyer, said, “the ‘and/or’ nature of nearly all the allegations in the indictment, instead of articulating anything specific that Sean did wrong, mirrors the improper ‘collective’ allegations that we have raised in the SEC action. Like the SEC action, we intend to vigorously defend the criminal charges.”

The company has filed a blanket statement denying any wrongdoing, while the right against self-incrimination has been invoked by Shane.

Sean, in a response filed in April, has seemingly tried to deflect some of the blame onto Shane and indicated that the allegations of the SEC may have been incorrectly attributed to him and might have been the handiwork of Shane. He said he did not “knowingly steal or purloin any money or investor funds or aid and abet his brother in doing so.”

Does Sean’s texted message to Shane on May 5, 2020: “I don’t like how many lies we have to tell,” hold any clue as to what lies in store?

 

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