SEC Charges San Francisco Bay Area Private Fund Executives with Multimillion Dollar Ponzi-Like Scheme

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it charged Mark D. Hanf, former CEO of Novato, California-based Pacific Private Money Group LLC (PPMG), and Hoai-Nam Chu Phan (also known as Nam Phan), former COO of a PPMG subsidiary, with orchestrating an offering fraud that raised more than $80 million from approximately 190 mostly retail investors, many of whom were retired senior citizens. According to the SEC's complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Hanf and Phan, from approximately December 2021 to November 2025, misrepresented how investor capital in two PPMG private funds would be used and made Ponzi-like payments to prior investors using new investor capital; the SEC further alleges Hanf misappropriated more than $7 million of investor funds for personal benefit. Jason Lee, Associate Director of the SEC's San Francisco Regional Office, stated that despite total outstanding investments in the two private funds of almost $121 million, by February 2026 the total recoverable assets of those funds were estimated to be less than $17 million. The SEC states that Hanf and Phan, without admitting the allegations, each cons

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