Another GPB Capital Holdings Auditor Resigns

GPB Capital Auditor Makes Decision To Step Down

Once again, investors will have to wait for the audited financials that GPB Capital Holdings keeps promising them and then delaying, as the alternative asset firm’s latest auditor has suddenly resigned. This means that for the foreseeable future, those who bought the company’s private placement funds will continue not to know exactly what their investments are worth. 

This is not the first team of auditors to suspend its work with GPB Capital, which invests mostly in waste management and auto dealerships and is accused of operating a $1.8B Ponzi scam. 

A previous accountant, Crowe Capital, stepped down last year just months after GPB announced an accounting overhaul and gave that as the reason why it hadn’t turned in financial statements for two of its largest private placements funds — the GPB Automotive Portfolio and the GPB Holdings II — to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). EisnerAmper then stepped in to replace Crowe Capital as the company’s auditor. 

In a letter sent on Friday to investors of the GPB Automotive Portfolio, the company explained that its auditor — it did not name EisnerAmper, specifically — made the decision to suspend work on financial statement audits in the wake of the criminal indictment against former GPB Chief Compliance Officer, Michael Cohn. 

He is accused of stealing confidential information from the SEC, which was his previous employer, regarding its investigation into GPB. The alternative asset company said that it had retained a third-party law firm to investigate the allegations against Cohn. 

The Trouble For GPB Capital Holdings Continues 

It was just in August 2019 that GPB Capital Holdings missed its own deadline that it had given to investors for giving them their required financial update. 

The resignation by the current auditing team is just the latest in a series of troubles and bad news involving GPB, which is accused of operating a $1.8B Ponzi scam. It also was recently the target of a new class-action securities fraud accusing the company, its executives, and other parties of working together to operate a complex and layered fraud. 

Civil investigations by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), as well as a criminal probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into GPB and its activities remain ongoing. 

Meanwhile, it’s those who bought the GPB private placements that have suffered huge losses, as the various GPB funds have plunged in value and investor redemptions remain suspended. Not only that, but investors are not allowed to liquidate their GPB private placements nor can they sell them on a secondary market. 

All the while, GPB executives have gotten rich off the alleged scam, while more than 60 brokerage firms and their brokers were paid over $160M in commissions from selling the investments. 

Whistleblower Believes She Is Being Targeted For Exposing GPB Fraud

Also last week, lawyers for Toni Caizazzo Neff, a former NASD examiner and Purshe Kaplan Sterling broker who first notified regulators about concerns regarding the GPB investments, said that she believes that she is being targeted. 

According to InvestmentNews, Neff has submitted police reports noting that she was being followed and that someone had tampered with her car. Responding to Neff’s allegations, a GPB spokesperson said that the company is not involved in any of these alleged incidents. 

GPB Investor Fraud Lawyers 

Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LLP (SSEK Law Firm) have been busy filling GPB arbitration claims on behalf of investors who have sustained huge losses from investing in a GPB Capital Holdings fund.

Purshe Kaplan Sterling, Arkadios Capital, Kalos Capital and Ladenburg Thalman’s Triad Advisors are just some of the many brokerage firms whose brokers sold these investments to customers. 

Contact our GPB investor fraud lawyers so that we can help you determine whether you have grounds for a claim.