The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday barred Ivan Acevedo, a former sales manager at Woodbridge Group of Companies, from the securities industry. Acevedo pleaded guilty in July 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. He’s currently in federal custody.
Acevedo, 44, along with co-defendant and fellow Los Angeles resident Dane Roseman, pleaded guilty to their participation in what prosecutors in Miami said was a $1.3 billion Ponzi scheme that caused more than 7,000 people to suffer financial losses, many of them elderly clients. Acevedo, Roseman and Woodbridge’s owner, Robert H. Shapiro, were arrested in April 2019.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Acevedo began work for Woodbridge as a sales agent in 2009, and was a sales manager from 2013 to 2014. In their capacities, Roseman and Acevedo sold Woodbridge securities using high-pressure tactics, promoting them as low-risk investments. Woodbridge’s main business model, said prosecutors, was to give investors promissory notes that the company said were tied to real properties owned by third parties.
“The Woodbridge sales operation controlled by Shapiro, managed by Acevedo then Roseman, functioned as a ‘phone room’ and featured high-pressure sales…
