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A former investment advisor who lived in a Coconut Grove luxury high-rise condo has pleaded guilty to directing a Ponzi scheme that fleeced $94 million from Venezuelan investors and Catholic dioceses in the South American country over the past two decades.
Andrew H. Jacobus, 64, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and money laundering this month. He now faces 15 years or more in prison at his sentencing in early February in Miami federal court after admitting that he bilked dozens of Venezuelans living in South Florida and abroad, according to his plea agreement and other court records.
Jacobus, who was granted a bond after his arrest in July and now lives in a Fort Lauderdale apartment, must repay the victims of his investment scheme and assist federal investigators in tracking down their stolen funds, but it’s unclear from court records how much the former investment advisor still has available in assets.
Jacobus induced the various Venezuelans — including a nonprofit group that supports the retirement and healthcare of Catholic priests — to invest tens of millions of dollars by promising them high-yield returns on fixed-income funds under his companies’ control, says a factual statement filed with his plea agreement. Jacobus admitted that he used those funds to pay off some investors while stealing from others to enrich himself between 2004 and 2024, the statement says.
Jacobus, who operated two Coral Gables-based businesses, Finser International Corp. and Kronus Financial Corp., promised yearly investment returns of 12% to 15% on certificates of deposit and other fixed-income securities as he secretly swindled investors until some learned of his theft in 2022 and complained to federal authorities, leading to an Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation and grand jury indictment filed in Miami this year.
Fictitious account statements
The factual statement, underscoring Jacobus’ guilty pleas to two counts in the indictment, notes that one Venezuelan investor transferred $1 million to a Kronus bank account in July 2020 “based on the defendant’s false representations that the money would be used for investment purposes.” Instead, Jacobus moved $120,000 from that account to another so that he could pay other investors to perpetuate his international Ponzi scheme.
“To conceal his fraud, Jacobus would create and provide to the victims fictitious account statements or balances purporting to show the investment portfolio and related balances, when in fact the victims’ accounts had significantly smaller balances,” Jacobus admitted in the factual statement signed by him, his defense attorney, Bruce Lehr, and federal prosecutor Robert Moore.
In addition to the indictment, the Securities and Exchange Commission also sued Jacobus and his companies, alleging he committed the same fraud scheme in a civil lawsuit.
The Venezuelan investors — 10 people are listed by their initials and two others as faith-based organizations in the indictment — turned to the United States as a safe haven to protect their money as their country collapsed economically during the administrations of the late President Hugo Chavez and current leader Nicolas Maduro.
At least five lawsuits in Miami-Dade
In recent years, several investors sued Jacobus and his firm, accusing them of fraud and civil theft involving tens of millions of dollars, according to civil court filings. They also notified the SEC, which had sanctioned Jacobus over pocketing exorbitant fees in a cease-and-desist order in 2020 when he and his firm, Finser International Corp., managed about $79 million in investment funds.
Among Jacobus’ investment victims: a wealthy businessman who owns a crane business, a plastic surgeon and a renowned sculptor, all from Venezuela, according to court records.
Jacobus’ investors accused the investment advisor of withholding and misappropriating their funds after they demanded he return their money, according to at least five lawsuits filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
Miami attorney Michael Padula, who filed three of those suits against the former investment advisor, said Jacobus “preyed on churches and hard-working entrepreneurs and investors and cost people their life savings.”
The first two cases accusing Jacobus of fraud and other civil violations were brought in 2022 by Padula, a former prosecutor at the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office who had focused on white-collar crime. Padula accused Jacobus of running a “Ponzi scheme” by using newer investors’ money to pay off older ones — an allegation that caught the attention of other Venezuelans who invested millions of dollars with Jacobus.
Padula’s clients, Fermin Suarez, a wealthy Venezuelan crane business owner, and Tubalcain Morales, who lives in Venezuela and Spain, reached respective settlements with Jacobus totaling about $18.5 million and $650,000, according to court records. Jacobus made a few payments to both men, then defaulted, Padula said.
Padula’s third client, Manuel Egea, a plastic surgeon residing in Venezuela, also filed suit in Miami, claiming he invested his “life savings” of about $9.5 million with Jacobus. The surgeon’s money was mostly placed in fixed-income investment funds that regularly yielded substantial monthly returns for years, his lawsuit states. But in 2023, Egea claims in his suit, the payments stopped, despite “several written requests to withdraw portions of [his] investment.”
Egea received a final judgment for his loss against Jacobus’ entities for $30 million, Padula said. But recovering funds from Jacobus or his companies has proven difficult, he said.
‘Jacobus had cleaned out her account’
Court records show other victims: Beatriz Aleman, an investment manager herself, and her husband, James Mathison, a sculptor whose work has been exhibited at shows in Miami, Venezuela and Europe, had an investment relationship with Jacobus dating back to 2012.
In their lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, the couple said they invested about $2 million with Jacobus through the fall of 2022 and Aleman herself referred more than 20 investors to him over the past decade.
The couple’s lawyer, Clarissa Rodriguez, said that before filing suit, she sent a letter to Jacobus demanding that he return the couple’s money — but he refused. The couple pursued legal action against Jacobus after they initially asked him to turn over about $760,000 in savings that he invested with the discount online firm, Interactive Brokers.
According to the couple’s suit, Aleman grew suspicious of Jacobus when she asked him to transfer $200,000 from her Interactive account to her bank in May 2023.
In an email, Aleman gave him instructions on where to wire the money, but Jacobus gave her excuses about transferring it, according to the suit. She then asked for a conference call with Jacobus, and he responded in an email that he was tired of repeating himself “ad nauseum” on the phone about the reasons for the delay. But they had never talked on the phone about the money transfer, leading Aleman to believe Jacobus “gaslighted” her, according to the couple’s suit.
Aleman learned from Interactive that her log-in credentials no longer existed and that the email address on file for her account had been changed to Jacobus’, the suit states. She found out that “Jacobus had cleaned out her account,” leaving Aleman with only $15,000 in savings at Interactive. A representative told Aleman that the monthly statements Jacobus had sent her showing her savings intact were “fake.”
On June 21, 2023, Jacobus admitted that he took her money for his own personal needs.
“I want to begin this note by asking for your forgiveness,” Jacobus emailed Aleman in Spanish, which was translated in the couple’s court filing. “I needed to make an urgent payment and without consulting you first, I boldly borrowed funds in your account at Interactive, with all the intention of returning them to you with a 15% return and without causing you any loss.”
But Aleman and her husband, Mathison, never got back their money, according to their lawyer.
Jay Weaver
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