A financial advisor based in Massapequa, N.Y., has pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of tens of millions of dollars between January 2017 and December 2024, including by investing in a single mining company and a drive-through coffee company startup run by his son.
Vincent Camarda, chairman and CEO of A.G. Morgan Financial Advisors, faces up to 20 years in prison, restitution of at least $160,022,836, and forfeiture of $6,639,498, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, announced Friday. Also on Friday, Camarda and associate James McArthur were charged with a civil lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which detailed the alleged scheme.
According to the plea agreement and court filings, Camarda misrepresented the risk profile and diversification of his Camarda Funds investments to clients, many of whom were elderly. In one case, he told clients he was investing in multiple mining companies, only to invest in one firm that later failed to meet interest payments on those investments. He used the same strategy, promising to invest in the food services industry, but instead put the money into a single startup coffee shop run by his son called Buzz’d Express Coffee, which also eventually failed to meet payment terms, according to the allegations.
The SEC wrote that Camarda “misrepresented the diversification of the investments to induce the victims to invest. These misrepresentations were designed to mislead investors into believing that their investments were safer than they actually were.” The financial advisor also failed to disclose conflicts of interest in the firms in which he invested. He had been receiving compensation from the mining business, and his son had an interest in the coffee business.
Finally, he “misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of the victims’ investments” by diverting them to himself via wire transfers to fund personal expenses, including plastic surgery, travel, jewelry and luxury goods.
Joseph Nocella Jr., United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and James C. Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, announced the guilty plea.
“This defendant used a series of lies to lure clients, including elderly and other vulnerable individuals, into investing with him, all while enriching himself,” Nocella said in a statement.
The regulator first brought charges against Camarda in the Eastern District of New York in January 2022. In that instance, he was charged with raising more than $75 million from hundreds of investors after soliciting unregistered securities offerings without approval from their registered broker/dealer, while failing to tell clients the firm owed about $750,000 to the company connected to the unregistered offerings. FINRA took disciplinary action against Camarda for those charges, according to regulatory filings.
In the civil lawsuit filed Friday, the SEC is seeking permanent injunctions against Camarda and his former chief compliance officer, McArthur, among other charges.
That lawsuit alleges that the duo raised at least $138 million from at least 431 investors “to purchase securities in the form of promissory notes issued by five high-risk private equity funds that Camarda and McArthur created, managed, and owned.”
Four of the funds allegedly went to the single mining company, and the fifth entirely to the start-up coffee shop company.
“When the high-risk funds failed, many investors lost all of the money they invested—which, for some, was their entire life savings,” the SEC wrote in the lawsuit.
From 2014 until March of 2022, Camarda and McArthur had been registered representatives with a number of broker/dealers, including LPL Financial, American Portfolios Financial Services, Traderfield Securities and IBN Financial Services.
