Andrew Katz, aka Ross Katz aka Drew Katz aka Stark Katz, a serial criminal who, at various times over the past seven years has claimed to be a “crypto entrepreneur” (operating through an entity known as “Seaquake”), and more recently, profiles himself on LinkedIn * as a “Fintech and “AI entrepreneur”, has fled Florida after being convicted on 4 charges of felony assault against law enforcement officers.
Fugitive Andrew Katz, aka Drew Katz, aka Ross Katz
*Note: In addition to using multiple aliases, Katz has recently taken to creating at least two LinkedIn accounts in an effort to obfuscate. In addition to the above LinkedIn profile, he is apparently using this LinkedIn profile, while he remains a fugitive from Miami-Dade County law enforcement.
Katz has been profiled via this outlet multiple times for his role in advancing securities fraud schemes, including defrauding crypto industry pioneer Brock Pierce, and for arrests on charges of assault, harassment, and stalking in Los Angeles and New York City. After being convicted in New York, in February 2022, Katz had already fled Manhattan for Miami, and a fugitive warrant was issued by New York authorities.
The latest event, which had Katz assaulting three police officers while they were attempting to arrest him on a domestic violence charge, led to his being convicted on four felony charges.
Katz is now being sought by Florida state law enforcement agencies. Those who have information as to Katz’s latest whereabouts are requested to contact the Miami-Dade County Department of Probation via 305-694-2876. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND THIS INDIVIDUAL; HE IS CONSIDERED TO BE ARMED AND DANGEROUS.
For those not aware, Michael Novogratz, the famed crypto industry ‘pioneer’ and crypto evangelist is a former Goldman Sachs ‘global macro wunderkind’ who then did a stint at asset management firm Fortress Investments, which cratered during his watch, turned into a bitcoin evangelist and became the “bitcoin billionaire” brains behind “crypto investment firm” Galaxy Digital. He has a long history of making big bets with other people’s money. Unfortunately, his gambles have often turned into snake-eyes when the dice stopped rolling.
But that’s OK, his personal investment accounts weren’t exposed to the slaughter that was wreaked on Fortess’s institutional investors when his misguided bets on Brazil currency back in 2014 turned into sour coffee grinds. The losses on bets he made or oversaw devastated Fortess, yet the firm managed to extricate its stakeholders through an IPO, enabling Fortress executives to cash out with tens of millions of dollars each.
“At
Fortress troubles first surfaced in the macro funds run by Novogratz, a man
known for his glitzy lifestyle, complete with a Tribeca duplex once owned by
Robert De Niro and a flamboyant wardrobe featuring diamond-studded belts and
cowboy boots.”
He quit Fortress to start a firm to invest his own
wealth. He kept investigating bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, becoming more
serious about the investments.
Over time, Mr. Novogratz came to see them as a
“really cool new technology” that was likely better capable of storing value
amid rising inflation than alternatives, he said at a recent conference. Soon,
he was a true convert, buying $10 million of bitcoin and another cryptocurrency
called ether partly because he sensed a lack of trust in global currencies, he
said. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-novogratzs-crypto-comeback-faces-a-trial-by-fire-11654315211
During the past five years, Novogratz has become the poster child for crypto and bitcoin, “talking his book” at every opportunity, and helping to lead thousands of blind mice investors to pump up the price of bitcoin and to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into his firm Galaxy Digital (OTCMKTS: BRPHF) so that he could “invest for them”—while reaping fees that would make most people’s eyes pop out.
Throughout the unprecedented bubble building in crypto “currencies”, Novogratz and many other evangelists/promoters including Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Michael Saylor, Disney film star Brock Pierce, the Winklevoss twins, investing genius and former Donald Trump PR trumpeter Anthony Scaramucci, Internet Billionaire and Game Show Host Mark Cuban among so many others, have proclaimed that Bitcoin, Ether, Tether, and many others represent “a store of value”, “a hedge against inflation”, “a safe haven when traditional financial assets (stocks, bonds, sovereign currencies) suffer from global economic and geopolitical turmoil.” All the crypto evangelists, and in particular, famed hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, proclaim that Bitcoin and other so-called currencies represent the “digital version of gold“; which many global investors believe to be a useful hedging tool that should be part of every portfolio.
So let’s take a measure. Since January of 2022, the US equities markets (as measured by S&P 500 index, DJIA, as well as markets in many other advanced countries have suffered generational losses in share prices. The declines of 25% in value in equity prices are thanks to an inflationary spiral caused by supply-chain challenges brought on by Covid 19, monetary policies that created historic government hand-outs in an effort to stem the impact of Covid-19, along with a global geopolitical crisis thanks to Russia invading Ukraine, and a sober reaction to over-inflated enterprise valuations and hysterical stock market speculation. The combination of these events has almost no comparison when looking back five decades.
Yes, stock markets are cyclical and suffer bear markets and crashes; some short-lived, others longer-lasting. The global benchmark S&P 500 is off 24% from its Dec 2021 all-time high; the German Stock Market Index has shaved 20% from its high, and the Shanghai Stock Index is off 10%. Gold, the universal hedge against both geopolitical crisis and inflation, is up a scant 1% YTD. Bitcoin, the proclaimed “hedge against all of the above-noted crisis events” has plunged 69% from its stratospheric all-time high.
As of June 18 2022, Bitcoin has lost more than 60% of its “value” on a YTD basis.
Among other investments, Mike Novogratz, via Galaxy, was a big backer of Terra Luna–a platform based on Tether, the digital asset platform that was co-founded by another crypto genius, former child-actor Brock Pierce. He’s a self-proclaimed billionaire too–and many refer to him as the “Prince of Puerto Rico” in view of the real estate he has acquired and the influence he has over the swarm of crypto ‘entrepreneurs’ who have taken over much of that island.
Like Novogratz, Pierce is an active investor in a broad swath of crypto initiatives and start-ups, one of which is a phony funny, yet apparently, a fraudulent firm calling itself Seaquake.io, for which Pierce is identified as an advisor. It is also a criminal enterprise that MarketsMuse has profiled for the past two years, and its founder Andrew Katz, is now purportedly a fugitive from justice.
Let’s not forget that investments made by Galaxy included Novogratz and his partners receiving ‘tokens’ issued by the companies they invested in that were priced at pennies. Those tokens were no different than penny-priced ‘warrants’ given to underwriters of traditional IPO offerings.
After pumping the news of those investments, those tokens turned into ‘real money’ for the promoters—who cashed out into the frenzy and bought mansions and boats; reminiscent of the antics made famous by the infamous Jordan Belfort’s firm Stratton Oakmont—the underwriter for the 1993 IPO of shoe company started by Steve Madden.
[Belfort and Madden were then convicted of securities fraud and both went to jail. Flash forward to 2021, Jordan Belfort repurposed himself into a crypto evangelist and is minting millions by ‘advising’ people on how and what crypto deals to invest in.]
February 2021– Novogratz Sees Bitcoin at $100k
Bloomberg Technology- Michael
Novogratz, a long time proponent of cryptocurrencies through his firm Galaxy
Digital Holdings Ltd., said Bitcoin and other digital coins have become “an
institutional asset class” and banks are “frantically” trying to get in on the
action.
Mar 31 2022In Midst of Crypto Sell-Off, Novogratz Says “I’m More Constructive about the market than I was previously..” Michael Novogratz, the billionaire cryptocurrency investor who leads Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd., said that while he still expects a volatile year, he has become more “constructive” about digital-asset markets than he was earlier.
“It
wouldn’t surprise me to see crypto significantly higher by the end of the
year,” Novogratz said during Galaxy’s earnings conference call on Thursday.
“Given the adoption cycle I’m seeing, given the way markets trade, and how I
see new people wanting to get in, the innovation we’re seeing in web3 and the
metaverse space, I’ve gotten more constructive than I was at the beginning of
the year.”
No
surprise then that soon thereafter, while talking up bitcoin investing and
predicting meteoric price rises, he was selling stakes that his firm
Galaxy Digital held in various “cryptocurrencies”. Nice.
May 92022 CEO Michael Novogratz highlighted weakness across crypto and equity markets during Galaxy’s earnings call Monday, though said he isn’t “panicked by any stretch.” He added that his recent investor meetings point to growing adoption, and noted that “crypto as a tech play” is gaining momentum.
“Volatility will continue,” according to Mike Novogratz, although he said he expects bitcoin to hold around the $30,000 level and ether to stick around the $2,000 level.
June 5 2022Novogratz Says “Bitcoin Won’t Break $20k” speaking at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference, the billionaire investor, known for always sharing his opinions on events surrounding the asset class, showcased his bullish stance on cryptocurrencies.
Novogratz
said he is confident that bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) would not crash below
$20,000 and $1,000, respectively.
The
crypto proponent stated that the two leading cryptocurrencies would hold
strongly at those levels while noting that the benchmark of S&P 500 (.SPX)
has dropped more than 20% from its record high earlier in January, and the
stock market might plummet further to 15% to 20%.
June 15 2022 “Crypto Crisis Evokes 1998 Hedge Fund Crash that Crippled Market”
That’s what Mike Novogratz, CEO of top crypto investment firm
Galaxy Digital, told CNBC Wednesday (June 15), referring to the 1998
collapse of a large and highly leveraged hedge fund that sent shockwaves so
large through the economy that the U.S. government was forced to intervene and
broker a $3.6 billion bailout.
June 18 2022 BTC sold down to $18,500.00
Our Editorial Team begs to ask the question, “Aside from making mediocre investment managers become multi-millionaires and billionaires, along with similar exponential gains in net worth for tens of hundreds (and upwards of many thousands of “innovators” and “disruptors”), what product or service, or what actual efficiency has been created for any industry that would justify the outsized gains in net worth afforded to a relatively few?” Contact Us to provide a rebuttal.
Andrew Ross Katz (aka Ross Katz), founder and CEO of Seaquake.io, a self-labeled “crypto trading firm” and “B2B service for cryptocurrency exchanges”, along with his partner, the firm’s Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Krueger of San Francisco, were first profiled by this outlet in September 2019 for their roles in defrauding a Family Office out of several hundred thousand dollars. And, while Katz remains at large–he continues to target a growing list of other unsuspecting victims.
Seaquake.io CEO Andrew Katz, A “Self-styled-Entrepreneur” Photo from “Pay-to-Promote-Yourself” Blog Techbullion
Andrew Ross Katz-“Crypto Entrepreneur” Mug Shot Photo April 2021 Arrest Florida Case # 13-2021-CF-005707-0001-XX
The gory details of that incident and the series of blatant misrepresentations made by those individuals became a matter of federal court record when a federal lawsuit was filed in Florida’s Middle District Court, merely several weeks after the ink was dry on the investment agreement with Katz, Krueger and the assortment of Seaquake connected shell companies under their control.
The supporting evidence to allegations of investor fraud made by the plaintiffs included investor documents executed by Andrew Katz, a smorgasbord of other evidence underscoring blatant misrepresentations and phony assertions made by Katz and Krueger as to their personal and professional backgrounds, the investment itself, along with an extensive file of email and other digital communications sent by Andrew Katz, and with copy to Krueger.
Seaquake.io principals Andrew Katz (l), “CFO” Matthew Krueger (c), and CIO Dylan Knight
According to the court documents, within days after the investors wired funds to a Seaquake entity, they learned of a series of misrepresentations made by Katz and Krueger, and demanded the return of their funds. In response, Katz and Krueger stated “they had no obligation to provide any information to the investors or the attorney for the investors, and would not respond further.” Days later, Katz and Krueger transferred the investor funds to other Seaquake bank accounts and to personal accounts in their names, and to a corporate account in which Katz’s father, Ken Katz of Arvada, Colorado is the registered agent. After transferring the funds, Katz and Krueger proceeded to dissolve the corporate registration of the entity to which the investors had sent their funds.
The preponderance of the incriminating evidence led the federal court judge to conclude the defendants had ‘touched the third rail’ of federal civil statutes pertaining to investor fraud and securities fraud. To mitigate further harm to investors, the judge issued an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO) that put a freeze on the variety of corporate bank accounts held by the web of Seaquake corporate entities controlled by Andrew Katz and Matthew Krueger, as well as the known personal bank and brokerage accounts held by Andrew Katz and Matthew Krueger. Days later, Katz and Krueger moved the funds again, first to cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, and then to cryptocurrency custody and trading platform, Binance.*
In view of the brazen nature of the fraud perpetrated by Mssrs. Katz and Krueger, this financial industry- published a series of follow-on articles profiling the activities of this ‘enterprise’, as well as Katz’s sordid prior criminal history, including recent Orders of Protection issued against Katz, a litany of criminal arrests across four different states over multiple years on charges of harassment, aggravated assault, weapons charges, breaking and entering, and stalking. The most recent known arrest occurred in April 2021 and took place in Miami, Florida, when Katz was charged with 11 Counts, including multiple charges for assaulting a police officer:
A February 2022 conviction for assault charges in New York stemmed from his March 2020 arrest in which Katz assaulted his now estranged wife. Law enforcement sources have indicated there is now a subsequent warrant for violating the second Order of Protection, and a fugitive warrant issued in New York for his arrest. Katz failed to appear for sentencing on the assault conviction, then fled the jurisdiction, and supposedly abandoned a $100,000 cash bond. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office would not comment or explain why those criminal records are sealed. The New York Criminal Court records are also sealed.
Great Track Record-For Arrests-Andrew Katz, Seaquake.io CEO
This platform also pointed to a conclusion by another expert that Seaquake principals committed SBA Loan Fraud relating to a forgivable PPP loan granted to the company in the midst of the pandemic crisis. Public records show that an application was processed and a loan received by Wyoming-registered Seaquake entity “Seaquake OPS LLC” that listed employees of the company which included Katz’s then-estranged wife, who was listed as “Creative Director”. According to informed sources, “she was never an employee, and never performed any work for the company”. When asked why that individual’s profile appeared on LinkedIn as “Creative Director” for Seaquake shortly before the loan application was submitted, the source stated “She had never created a LinkedIn profile for herself, any less one that would include a fictitious employment history.” The corporate registration for the Wyoming-domiciled Seaquake entity that received the SBA PPP loan was dissolved four months after Katz and Krueger received the funds from the SBA.
Cryptocurrency Meltdown Calls for a Re-Visit
As fortunes implode and the crypto industry becomes un-hinged, the cause and effect of scammers, charlatans, and Ponzi-style schemes
The intent of our editorial team has been to protect other investors from being duped by Katz and Krueger, and from any others advancing similar frauds against unsuspecting investors. In our expose, we also spotlighted several “legitimate” crypto and digital asset investment firms that, according to the Seaquake.io corporate website, have purportedly invested in the Seaquake enterprise without bothering to perform basic due diligence that would typically include interrogation of court databases and criminal background searches.
The crypto “investment firms” displayed on the Seaquake website include Percival Capital, operated by former Disney “Mighty Ducks” star turned world-famous crypto enthusiast and investor and aspiring political candidate Brock Pierce, along with industry investment firm Blockchain Founders Fund (“BFF”).
The Seaquake website had (until recently) displayed Pierce and BFF Managing Partner Aly Madhavji as Advisors to the firm. Other investors displayed include “SOSV ChinaAccelerator”, a China-based VC and PE firm, Sydney; Australia-based alternative asset investment firm “Artesian Ventures”, a firm called “ScaleX”, and a little-known investment firm “Red Spark”. The latter is operated by a Stephen Gill, who resides in New York and Puerto Rico. Gill is also displayed as an Advisor to Seaquake. These actors either purposefully chose not to perform a scintalla of due diligence for their own reasons, or simply overlook the red flags before they deployed their respective investors’ capital to the Seaquake enterprise.
Since April of this year, four different “pay-to-promote yourself” blogs have published “interviews” of Katz, each of which profiled him as a “crypto entrepreneur”. Each of those obscure blog platforms (“TechBullion.com”, “Laptopsforless.com”, “ScoopIt.com”, and “VentsMagazine.com”) display purported interviews by “journalists” (who each use pseudonyms,) and showcase background information for Andrew Katz that among other “virtues”, includes him (i) “having worked as a securities industry trader and traded “billions of dollars”; (ii) that he “earned a Masters in Finance from Harvard University”, and (iii) that “Seaquake has been generating profits within fifteen months of being created in 2018.”
“Interview with Andrew Katz” in “pay-to-promote your image” blog Bottom right image: New York Criminal Court Arrest Record Nov 2020
All very entertaining claims; yet all are false.
Financial Industry Background. Securities Industry regulator FINRA has NO record of Katz ever being employed in the industry. He claims to have worked for EFG Bank as a trader, yet a senior HR executive for EFG Bank stated “we have no record of his employment.”
UBS, the other financial industry firm that Katz claims to have worked for stated “we cannot confirm (or deny) having employed him.
2. “Academic Pedigree” “Harvard Masters in Finance”. Harvard University records indicate Katz did attend an online course for 1 year and earned a Master of Arts, (not Finance); comparable to degrees offered by the online University of Phoenix. As to other academic credentials, during his youth, Katz did briefly attend “World Wide Association of Specialty Programs”. This ‘school’ is “inthe business of serving desperate parents of troubled youths and specializes in improving the students’ aberrant social behavior..”
3. “Business Success“. The business he claims to be “generating profits since shortly after we were formed..”?
Katz disputes this himself in documents obtained from the civil lawsuit in Florida. Katz submitted an affidavit stating “investors were told the business is a start-up, does not generate revenue [no fewer profits] and is not expected to until first raising several million dollars in development capital.”
4. “Industry Entrepreneur.” Katz and Co also maintain personal and company Twitter accounts; each of which falls into the realm that Elon Musk has used to walk back his bid to acquire Twitter; the percentage of phony Twitter accounts is exponentially greater than what Twitter has stated in corporate filings. In this case, Katz’s personal Twitter account, @AndrewKCrypto (https://twitter.com/AndrewKCrypto) indicates his having 5346 followers. A simple interrogation discovered that all but ten of those followers are legitimate Twitter accounts. The rest are “bots” and all of those accounts are less than several months old, none have more than 5-10 followers; a classic ‘tell’ for those familiar with Twitter Inc.s failure to remove phony accounts. The same seems to be true for the Seaquake company Twitter account (@_Seaquake_); the account boasts nearly 5000 “followers”, yet 98% of which Elon Musk would say are “Phony Followers! All Bots!”
MarketsMuse has made repeated attempts to contact each of the investors displayed on the Seaquake website. Earlier this year, Ali Madhavji of Blockchain Founders Fund indicated that “BFF has no involvement with Seaquake”, yet his firm’s name remains prominent on the front page of the Seaquake.io website.
A representative of Percival Capital replied to us with a statement that “They [Seaquake] were not authorized to display Mr. Pierce on their website, and we requested them to remove that reference.” The Percival Capital representative did not dispute that Pierce and his firm are in fact investors. “SOSV” Managing Partner William Bao Bean stated that his firm is in fact an investor, but would provide no other information. Stephen Gill, nor any other individuals who seem to be affiliated with Red Spark or individuals associated with “Scalex” replied to a request for comment.
Law enforcement officials from Arvada, Colorado, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami are all familiar with Katz. They are aware that he uses aliases “Ross Katz” and “Stark Katz”, and of the assortment of harassment charges stemming from abusive messages and death threats delivered via email and burner phone [“purportedly’’] sent by Katz, each in retaliation against a variety of individuals, including those who have filed charges against him. Knowledgeable officials have suggested that ‘the tone and tenor of the messages, the history of arrest charges, the serial nature of his actions, and other corroborating records makes it clear that he [Katz] is a dangerous individual who continues to commit brazen acts.’ Added one expert, “It doesn’t take a trained criminal profiler to conclude that this individual will continue to pose a threat to others until such time as someone from the law enforcement community or a regulatory agency takes proactive measures.”
Begging the question as to how it is possible that Katz and his accomplice Matthew Krueger remain at large. Three former government prosecutors who are familiar with the matter expressed being “baffled” by the fact that Katz has been repeatedly arrested, but not successfully prosecuted and jailed. As to Katz’s current whereabouts, he was last sighted in April of this year, while mingling with Seaquake “co-founder” Dylan Knight at a Miami crypto industry conference. One individual who is known to be an acquaintance of Katz, and who requested anonymity, suggested that “he might be in a medical clinic and being treated Monkeypox.”
*The above-referenced Federal Civil Litigation was “dismissed without prejudice” on a technicality after the presiding judge ruled that the Florida Middle District Court had “no personal jurisdiction” over the defendants. Despite plaintiffs submitting evidence that Katz maintained a voter registration in Florida and that one of the Seaquake entities was incorporated in Florida, the judge recommended to plaintiffs that they re-file their action in a different court. One attorney who is only tangentially familiar with the case stated “The statute of limitations is still open for such an action to be advanced in the State of Colorado or the State of California.“
Social Capital SPAC factory run by SPACmeister, notorious Tweeter and promoter of RedditArmy favorite stocks Chamath Palihapitiya is rumored to have filed a confidential S-1 for his latest Special Purpose Acquisition Company, (aka SPAC). The entity is to be called SIDS Acquisition Corp. According to sources, @chamath aims to focus on “biotech companies that are creating vaccines for those who suffer from acute stupidity”. The acronym is a play on Forrest Gump’s famous line: “Stupid Is as Stupid Does”
From the “believe it or is it nuts?” news department, Palihapitiya, who is also Chairman of Spaceshot SPAC VirginGalactic has assembled a board of biotech innovators, famous billionaires, notorious disruptors, and finance industry geniuses to identify and ferret out SPAC merger candidates. From the biotech world, Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes will be in charge of due diligence, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk will oversee funding strategies, and CNBC host Jim Cramer will serve as the designated head of PR, Communications and “P&D”. Famous financier Max Bialystock is slated to be the CFO for the new blank check company.
SIDS Acquisition Corp Executive Team
According to unconfirmed sources, SIDS Acquisition has already engaged online trading platform Robinhood to include this listing in a new “private share offering module for the masses” that will offer access to buying the SIDS SPAC on a pre-IPO basis. Elon Musk is said to be overseeing a pact with soon-to-IPO “Coinbase” so that bitcoin and dogecoin can be used by the RedditArmy and others to purchase pre-IPO futures contract in the latest Social Capital SPAC.
Noted Peter Thiel, one of the sharpest early-stage investors of this generation, is said to be getting his checkbook ready for this blank check company and plans on deploying $100 million. Said a spokesperson for Thiel, “If there was ever a moment in history when there should be a vaccine for stupidity, this would be it!”
MarketsMuse Editor Caveat Emptor: Yes, the above news story is fake news and intended only to parody the current cycle of craziness, stupidity, and speculation taking place across the US equities market.
Andrew Katz aka Ross Katz aka Stark Katz, the co-founder of so-called digital asset infrastructure and crypto-currency trading firm Seaquake.io, who along with his partner Matthew J. Krueger of San Francisco and UK citizen Dylan Knight are facing investor fraud charges, is now slated to appear in New York Criminal Court April 30 to answer one count of felony assault, one count of grand larceny and one count of aggravated harassment. Katz, whose bail was set at $200,000 had him posting $100,000 in cash, which sources believe to have emanated from funds that Katz and his partner Matthew J. Krueger of San Francisco hoodwinked from a Florida-based family office 18 months ago.
FEB 12 2022 UPDATE: ANDREW KATZ CONVICTED OF ASSAULT CHARGES IN NEW YORK; FLEES AND FORGOES $200K BAIL; NOW A FUGITIVE WANTED BY NYPD
Reward Offered For Information Leading to Apprehension of Founder of so-called “crypto trading and digital asset infrastructure firm”. DO NOT APPROACH SUSPECT: CONTACT NYPD AT 1-800-577-TIPS, OR SUBMIT TIP TO CRIME STOPPERS WEBSITE VIA THIS LINK
The case document is via New York Court System Case CR-02020482-20NY, The victim of the assault is Katz’s now-estranged wife, Selen Katz, a Turkish immigrant who appears to make her career as an Instagram fashion model.
Felony Assualt Victim, Selen Katz,
Defendant Katz, who apparently still promotes himself on the firm’s website as co-founder of the so-called digital asset infrastructure company “Seaquake.io” was arrested this past November in New York and now faces 2nd Degree Felony Assault Charges (a class D felony), one count of Grand Larceny ( an E Felony) and one charge of aggravated harassment. If Katz is found guilty or if decides to plead guilty and save the court system the aggravation of having to deal with him, he could be sentenced to a minimum of 2 years in prison.
Katz and Krueger, who have been labeled “the Crypto Kleptos” and The Seaquake Slimeboys” by several people interviewed, are also said to be facing a pending list of other criminal matters, including SBA PPP bank loan fraud. Public records indicate that Mssrs. Katz and Krueger applied for a PPP loan for Seaquake OPS LLC, a Wyoming entity that Seaquake corporate presentations have identified as one of several Seaquake companies. Seaquake OPS LLC did receive a Paycheck Protection Loan of $22,813 through Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, in May, 2020.
Whether Katz or Krueger (or jointly) prepared the loan application when listing employees, Katz’s estranged wife was identified as the company’s Creative Director (whose employment with Seaquake, according to her LinkedIn profile, started in April of 2020. Informed sources have since indicated that Ms. Katz had no recollection of ever having created a LinkedIn account, and has stated she was never an employee of any Seaquake entity. According to police records in Los Angeles and New York, the current assault charge is the latest in a series of at least five prior domestic abuse arrests for Katz.
Manhattan District Attorney’s office would not provide details as to Katz’s current place of residence, yet he is suspected of squirming through an assortment of Airbnb rentals in Southern California while awaiting his April 30 court appearance, as well as New York City. In various documents, Katz also lists residences in Arvada Colorado (belonging to his parents Ken and Alyson Mahl Katz), and he lists addresses in California and Florida in various bank account documents obtained by court order. According to public databases, Katz has prior assault charges, along with charges of harassment, breaking and entering, and stalking throughout the past several years.
In the Florida securities and investor fraud case, in which defendants Katz and Krueger are charged with defrauding a Family Office it’s alleged that the Seaquake Slimeboys (mis) represented they were operating a start-up business and told investors that their several hundred thousand dollar investment in August 2019 “was for balance-sheet purposes only and to show pending venture investors the company did have other investors and assets on the balance sheet”. Communications sent by Katz to the investors indicated a small portion of the capital would be deployed to a proprietary “high-frequency trading” application for crypto currencies.
Alas, there were no pending VC investors, and there was no actual trading application. Katz and Krueger moved the investor funds from one bank to another, and then to a Coinbase account, and thereafter to crypto exchange Binance. It is easy to suspect that Katz and Krueger (a former PayPal employee fluent in cryptocurrency) have been enjoying the 6-fold increase in the price of bitcoin since the initial investor fraud took place.
With today’s announcement from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) indicating they are that much closer to a Covid-19 vaccine, its time to look forward to who the Biden administration will appoint to prosecute the tens of thousands of SBA PPP loan scammers who reaped tens of billions after the Trump administration made it a simple feat to fill out a form and run with the money.
The SBA has recently published a list that contains thousands of companies that received over $150k each. Many received several million dollars. And, the SBA is scheduled to release an even more comprehensive list comprised of tens of thousands of companies that received less than $150k. The current list and the one soon to come out provides a roadmap to criminal enterprises and unsavory categories.
Propublica is making the interrogation easy for amateur sleuths.
Take for example a company known as SOSV Payroll LLC, and its interesting connection to a company profiled here last year, “Seaquake.io”, which appears to be not much more than a spiderweb of intertwined shell companies that claims to build software applications for trading cryptocurrency. Our prior reporting has led most to appreciate that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, and within the context of investor scams, Seaquake is the queen of ducks, especially when its former business development executive stated “they sell nothing but vaporware and nobody has bought it, other than investors who were deceived into buying into the company.”
SOSV Payroll is a Delaware entity with a principal office in Princeton, NJ and according to corporate filing records, is structured as a “Foreign Limited Liability Company.” The company also registered with the State of Colorado in February 2019. According to SBA PPP loan application documents filed in April 2020, they say they have 30 employees. The SBA PPP loan was approved and made via First Republic Bank for somewhere between $350k-$1million.
Of interest, this entity is a direct affiliate of Ireland-based venture fund “SOSV, The Accelerator VC”, which claims to have $700m in AUM. Soon after receiving the SBA loan, SOSV announced they made a direct investment in the above-mentioned Seaquake.io, a holding company with multiple corporate shells including in Colorado. More relevant, Seaquake has been a defendant in multiple actions, including allegations of investor fraud brought against Seaquake CFO Matthew Krueger and co-founder Andrew Ross Stark aka Ross Stark aka Stark Katz. According to criminal background searches, Katz has a lengthy history of charges ranging from breaking and entering to domestic violence to stalking.
UPDATED MARCH 2020: Add a bank loan fraud perpetrated by Katz and Krueger in connection with Seaquake OPS LLC, a Wyoming entity that is part of the web of Seaquake companies. Recently discovered, Seaquale OPS LLC did in fact apply for and did receive a Paycheck Protection Loan of $22,813 through Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, which was approved in May, 2020. In that loan application, Selen Katz, former wife of Andrew Katz, and the victim identified in the felony assault charge is identified as an employee of Seaquake. Her title, according to a LinkedIn profile is “creative director” and her date of employment is the same month in which the PPP Loan was applied for.
We don’t know why an affiliate to a $700m AUM Ireland-based venture fund needed to apply for an SBA PPP loan. We don’t know if it’s kosher or not. We do know that the SBA PPP loan program has been exploited by tens of thousands of firms. How or if President-elect Joe Biden and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, the former California Attorney General will be able to claw back and/or prosecute those who submitted false loan documents and received taxpayer money is a question that may never be answered. The good news is that detailed data regarding more than $100bil in loans handed out, including the business names and addresses pertaining to the millions who received loans in amounts under $150k is expected to be released in December.
The above-referenced Seaquake enterprise (first exposed by MarketsMuse last October after Law360.com published a federal lawsuit against the company and its principals) also has corporate shell registrations in California, Wyoming, Florida, and the United Kingdom (at last count). According to confidential sources, at least two of its subsidiaries will be unveiled for having received SBA PPP loan support, despite former insiders acknowledging the company has no product, has no customers, and no documented salaried employees, other than Mssrs. Katz and Krueger, and in April (immediately prior to submitting loan applications), a new LinkedIn profile indicated this company added a “creative designer”, who also happens to be co-founder Katz’s wife. Ms. Katz also appears to be a fashion model and Instagram influencer, according to her profile at www.instagram/seloupe.
Now that Pfizer appears to be one step closer to solving the Covid-19 vaccine crisis, one can hope that we will all go back to business, including SBA, IRS, and state fraud investigators, who can focus on bringing SBA loan predators to justice.
In a scheme that reads much like the MarketsMuse story published in October profiling so-called digital asset firm Seaquake.io, whose principals Andrew Katz and Matthew Krueger fraudently claimed to be operating a high-frequency trading system for cryptocurrencies, Michael W. Ackerman of Ohio, and a former NYSE floor broker, was charged yesterday by the US SEC, the CFTC and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York for defrauding investors out of $33million in the course of operating cryptocurrency trading scam.
Ackerman, much like Seaquake’s Katz and Krueger, provided investors with phony documents that claimed his firm’s two entities, Q3 Trading Club and Q3 I LP, operated a HFT trading firm that developed a “proprietary trading algorithm” for trading cryptocurrencies. As it turns out, Ackerman, along with with two other defendants charged in the case, used their investors’ funds to purchase homes, cars, jewelry and other personal items. One can only guess that Katz and Krueger of Seaquake stole Ackerman’s playbook for how to defraud investors, as Ackerman apparently first advanced his scheme in 2017 and continued until 2019 according to the charges.
While Katz and Krueger have not yet been hit with criminal charges in their cryptocurrency trading scam, the Ackerman timeline would suggest that the Seaquake operators, who still maintain a company website and are purportedly still soliciting investors, can expect an early morning knock on their doors sometime soon.
Michael Ackerman allegedly raised $33 million in a fraudulent crypto
trading scheme. Further, Ackerman and his two partners misled investors
by claiming they had developed an extraordinarily profitable crypto
trading algorithm. One of the partners was a doctor. (CrowdFundInsider)
According to the SEC, around 150 investors, including many in the
medical fraternity, lost money in the alleged fraud. The perpetrators
floated Q3 Trading Club and Q3 I LP – two entities that enabled the
digital currency investment offering.
The SEC also alleged Ackerman used most of the money raised from the
hapless investors to buy jewelry, cars, and to purchase and renovate a
house.
Moreover, he lied to investors about the profitability of his trading, the status of the funds and their safety.
He “doctored” computer screenshots of trading accounts to give a false impression that they held as much as $310 million.
“Ackerman exploited popular interest in digital assets as a means to
obtain millions of dollars for his personal use,” said Eric I. Bustillo,
Director of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office.
