SEC charges owner of investment company with fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday charged a New Jersey resident with defrauding investors, who invested millions based on false claims about investments in real estate. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Seth P. Levine, the president and owner of Norse Holdings, LLC, a real estate investment and management company, sold membership interests in limited liability companies that purchased and owned apartment complexes.

According to the complaint, from at least February 2015 through August 2019, Levine raised millions of dollars from more than 60 investors, including family, friends, and other investors. In offering the interests, Levine allegedly used misleading and false representations that masked Norse Holdings’ underlying financial problems and its inability to pay promised returns without using new investor monies or proceeds from a related mortgage fraud. Specifically, the complaint alleges that Levine provided investors with documents reflecting false and inaccurate information concerning the profitability of the apartment complexes; sold overlapping ownership interests to investors using false operating agreements and, at times, forged signatures; frequently commingled investor funds to prop up real estate holdings that were struggling; and paid investors with fake profits generated by the mortgage fraud Levine conducted using the same properties.

• SEC press release