Florida's 'Mother Theresa' charged $196M in Ponzi Scheme 

A Florida woman who was often referred to as “Mother Theresa” and a man were charged with running a $196 million Ponzi Scheme, according to a filing from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

Pavel Ruiz, 29, was accused of pocketing $6.5 million after defrauding investors out of $42 million through companies run by Johana M. Garcia. 

Garcia claimed to have been referred to as the “Mother Theresa” of her community because she always found ways to “help hard-working individuals make money,” according to a blog post from one of her companies’ sites. 

However, the SEC filing claims that Garcia’s companies were run as a Ponzi scheme, which “from at least June 2020 until August 2021, raised more than $196 million from more than 15,400 investors nationwide through an unregistered fraudulent securities offering.”

The scheme involved Garcia selling the company as a business making merchant cash advances (MCA) to businesses that needed cash quickly and thereby helping regular people generate wealth. 

“But only a small fraction of investor funds were used to make MCAs,” the SEC filing against Ruiz said. Instead, the cash was used to “pay fictitious returns” to investors. 

Garcia told investors that her company would guarantee them a share of the recipient businesses’ income for months to come. 

The company siphoned millions of dollars and used new investments to prop up bogus monthly “returns” of 10% at an annualized rate of 120%, reported Wusf media.

The SEC filed an initial complaint against Garcia last year, which resulted in a federal judge ordering her to freeze the companies’ assets. However, last week, the SEC filed a second complaint against Ruiz and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida charged him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.