Lancaster County businessman Daryl Heller funneled $185 million from ATM investments into his own pockets and his other businesses, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission said in a civil complaint filed last week.
Faked documents, non-existent ATMs passed off as generating money, an ATM portal meant to dupe investors at a presentation and junk ATMs sold to investors at a 4,000% markup were all part of the scheme that enriched Heller but left investors holding a bag of worthless IOUs. The multi-year investment scheme allegedly defrauded investors of more than $400 million, the SEC said in its Sept. 3 filing.
For the first time, the filing – which came at the same time as Heller’s arrest on separate federal fraud charges – offers an accounting of how much Heller pulled from the ATM investments while providing new details of how he orchestrated the alleged scheme…