Fund manager charged by SEC for $7M fraud scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged fund manager Eric C. Malley and his company MG Capital Management L.P. with defrauding retail investors in two real estate funds managed by MG Capital.

According to the SEC’s complaint, beginning in 2014, Malley – a licensed real estate broker with no investment management experience – and MG Capital solicited investments in two real estate funds, MG Capital Management Residential Funds III and IV, respectively, raising a total of $58 million primarily on the strength of a fabricated investment track record. The complaint alleges that in marketing Funds III and IV, Malley and MG Capital falsely claimed that they had previously managed two highly-successful real estate funds with a combined portfolio value of $1.18 billion that had significantly outperformed the S&P 500 Index over a 10-year period when, in fact, those prior funds never existed. As alleged, Malley and MG Capital made numerous other misrepresentations in their marketing materials and offering documents, including claiming that investors’ capital was “100 percent protected from loss” and secured by a non-existent $250 million balance sheet and that they had partnerships with hundreds of prospective tenants with pre-signed, multi-year lease agreements. Finally, the complaint alleges that Malley and MG Capital misappropriated more than $7 million in investor assets while using falsified financial reports to conceal huge losses that ultimately forced the two funds into wind-down.

• SEC press release