A South Florida woman who was the former CEO of an investment firm has pleaded guilty for her role in a $190 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded multiple investors, authorities said.
Johanna Michely Garcia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said in a news release Tuesday.
Garcia, 41, from Broward, was the former Chief Executive Officer of MJ Capital Funding, LLC, which solicited funds from investors for merchant cash advances, or MCAs, a type of short-term financing typically used by small businesses.
From October 2020 through August 2021, Garcia, Pavel Ramon Ruiz Hernandez, and others got investors to hand over funds by making false statements about how their money would be used for the MCAs, prosecutors said.
The company ended up making few loans and didn’t earn anywhere near the profits it needed to pay investors …