A Broward woman called herself ‘Mother Teresa.’ She’s sentenced to 20 years for fraud
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The MJ Capital Funding Fraud
Johanna Garcia’s guilty plea brings the MJ Capital Funding fraud totals to three guilty pleas; $190 million fraudulently raised; and $90 million lost by investors.
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Five more possible cronies of Broward’s ‘Mother Teresa’ charged in her $196M fraud
A Broward woman who called herself ‘Mother Teresa’ admits a $190 million Ponzi scheme
Broward man and ‘Mother Theresa’ accused of raising $196 million in a Ponzi scheme
A Broward ‘Mother Theresa,’ her cronies — and, the feds say, a $190 million Ponzi scheme
A Broward fraudster cost investors $25 million. He’ll pay with prison time and money
A North Broward woman whose company website declared she’s “often referred to as ‘Mother Teresa’ in her community” now knows how long she’ll be part of the prison community for engineering a $190 million Ponzi scheme.
Johanna Garcia, 41, received a 20-year federal prison sentence Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale federal court after pleading guilty in July to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud. Garcia lived in Coral Springs and North Lauderdale, and worked from a Pompano Beach strip mall where she ran MJ Capital Funding and its related companies.
But, that’s not all.
As stated in Garcia’s guilty plea, after the FBI and SEC caught up to MJ Capital Funding and shut it down, Garcia and Pavel Ruiz Hernandez — he’s doing nine years in federal prison — and the rest of the MJ Capital gang got to work on a new Ponzi scheme. They managed to raise $3.2 to $4 million from 20 investors using companies not registered with the state of Florida, such as New Beginning Global Funding, New Beginning Capital Funding, Lion Heart Capital Group, GMR Remodeling.
Both Ponzi schemes worked off the same lie: Garcia’s companies were providing short-term loans for businesses, merchant cash advances (MCA).
The reference to Garcia as “Mother Theresa” appeared on the MJ Capital Funding website, which has been operated by the Kozyak Tropin Throckmorton law firm and receiver Bernice Lee after the Ponzi scheme got shut down.
Though Garcia’s crew used lies about MCAs to run a big money Ponzi scheme out of Broward, MJ Capital isn’t related to Carl Ruderman’s 1 Global Capital, the MCA business engine used for a $285 million Ponzi scheme out of Hallandale Beach.
READ MORE: Aventura CEO’s sentence in ripoff of 3,400 investors: 1 year per each $50 million stolen
There are legitimate businesses that offer MCAs that help businesses get going or get over an immediate cash flow problem. MJ Capital Funding wasn’t one.
“MJ Capital funded only a relatively small numbers of MCAs and failed to earn the profits it needed to pay the investor returns and principal promised investors,” her guilty plea admission said. “As a result, Garcia and her co-conspirators paid investor returns by paying existing investors using new investor funds.”
With the funds from this by-the-book Ponzi scheme, Garcia and her cronies “misappropriated millions of dollars of investor funds to pay for, among other things, personal expenses and investments.”
Investors lost about $90 million in the MJ Capital Funding fraud. Garcia’s restitution hearing will be March 3.
Some investors sued Wells Fargo Bank for poor money laundering safeguards that allowed the scheme and got a reported $26 million settlement, according to Law360.
FBI Miami and the Office of Financial Regulation investigated this case with the help of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office and Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz handled the prosecution.
This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 3:44 PM.
