Miami man ripped off $40M from investors in his E-Card lending business: feds
In just five years, Pablo Silverio Rebollido raked in tens of millions of dollars from a lending business that he ran out of a drab strip mall in the Fontainebleau area of West Miami-Dade.
But federal authorities say Rebollido made that fortune by telling lots of lies to investors in his company, E-Card Merchant LLC, which was supposed to use their money to finance cash advances to retailers. In turn, he promised to pay back the investors with proceeds from the retailers’ credit card sales.
One slight problem: Rebollido’s lending business had no retail borrowers, according to a new wire-fraud case filed in Miami federal court.
It was all a con: He simply used money from E-Card’s new investors to pay back old ones in a classic Ponzi scheme and ended up spending their money on himself, including buying a power boat, real estate and luxury items, the charging document says.
Federal prosecutors say more than 70 investors sank about $50 million into Rebollido’s E-Card lending business between August 2019 and February 2024. In the end, they lost $40 million of their investments, according to prosecutors.
The FBI, which investigated the case, has set up a website seeking more potential victims to come forward.
Rebollido, 47, must appear in Miami federal court next Friday, April 11, to face a single wire-fraud charge. Last July, he received a letter from a prosecutor saying he was a “target of a grand jury investigation,” but was not charged until late March. Philip Horowitz, a defense lawyer who initially represented him, said on Thursday that he could not comment about the case.
Rebollido was charged by a so-called information, a tell-tale sign that he will be cooperating with prosecutors as part of an eventual plea deal. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison, but that high level of punishment is not likely.
Prosecutors Robert Moore and Jon Juenger said in the information that Rebollido and other associates persuaded investors to finance his lending business with millions of dollars by making “materially false and fraudulent statements,” including that their “funds would be used to make high-interest loans to E-Card clients.”
Rebollido falsely told potential investors that his business had more than 70 merchant clients that received E-Card cash advances, the prosecutors said. He had none, they said.
Rebollido, who operated E-Card out of second story office in the Coral Point Plaza, 8410 W. Flagler St., is accused of stealing investors’ money and spending it on an apartment in Marathon, a 24-foot Cruiser Yacht and other property, according to the information.
Authorities also seized about $160,000 from his bank and brokerage accounts.
This story was originally published April 4, 2025 at 7:55 AM.
