The SEC filed a complaint against Drive Planning LLC and its founder and CEO, Russell Todd Burkhalter, accusing the defendants of running a $300 million Ponzi scheme through Drive Planning by selling unregistered securities in the form of Real Estate Acceleration Loans (REAL), and promising returns of 10% in three months, and then using later investor moneys to pay off earlier investors.
The complaint lists Jacqueline Burkalter, The Burkhalter Ranch Corporation, Drive Properties, Drive Gulfport Properties, and TBR Supply House, Inc. as relief defendants.
According to regulators, Burkhalter and Drive Planning encouraged people to invest in REALs by dipping into their savings, IRAs, and lines of credit. By May 2024, the scheme received over a million dollars with over 100 sales agents throughout the country helping to raise investments. By June, the scheme had grown to $3 million raised from 2,000 investors.
Burkhalter and/or Drive Planning purportedly told REAL investors that their money would be sent to property developers and/or used to enter into joint ventures with property developers, even though in actuality, money from newer investors was simply used to pay returns to earlier investors, a classic Ponzi scheme technique.
The SEC charged Burkhalter and Drive Planning with employing devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud investors in the offer and sale of securities, obtaining money by means of material misrepresentations and omissions, and engaging in acts, practices and courses of business which operate as a fraud.
Burkhalter formerly served with OneAmerica Securities, MML Investors Services, Triad Advisors, and Ashworth Sullivan Wealth Management Group.
If you invested with Russell Burkhalter or Drive Planning and have suffered losses due to the misrepresented and fraudulent nature of the REAL's false promise of 10% returns, paid from newer investors to pay older ones, please call an experienced FINRA arbitration attorney at The Law Offices of Jonathan W. Evans & Associates at (800) 699-1881 for an investigation and consultation.