Articles Tagged with Downing Investment Partners

Unregistered investment advisers (IAs) David Wagner and Mark Lawrence, Downing Investment Partners, Downing Partners, and Downing Digital Healthcare Group are now facing US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charges accusing them of involvement in an $8M scam that allegedly defrauded dozens of healthcare fund investors. Wagner and Downing are also facing parallel criminal charges.

The regulator contends that between 5/2014 and 1/2017, Wagner, Lawrence, and the companies they headed sold healthcare services and technology-related investment opportunities while defrauding 30 investors, many of them “purported” employees at two of the defendant companies, as well as at Downing Health Technologies, Inc., and Cliniflow Technologies. According to the SEC’s complaint, the two unregistered investment advisers and their companies claimed to acquire, oversee, and resell companies that offered technologies and services for the investment portfolios of the healthcare funds at issue.

To bring in new investors, the two unregistered IA’s allegedly would inflate how much was available in cash reserves at the funds, including at Downing Digital Healthcare Group and Downing Investment Partners, as well as the revenue from the portfolio companies of the funds. Wagner is also accused of secretly negotiating a deal that obligated Downing Digital Healthcare Group to pay him and an entity that he operated certain management fees. This allegedly resulted in the defendants misusing at least $540K of the $1.5M that was invested in Downing Digital Healthcare Group to go toward these fees.