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The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Brett Pittsenbargar, a Texas-based external sales agent for the Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC, and his wholly owned alter ego company with illegally selling Woodbridge securities to retail investors while acting as an unregistered broker.
According to the complaint, Pittsenbargar was among Woodbridge's top revenue producers.
The SEC previously charged Woodbridge and its former owner, Robert H. Shapiro, and 19 of Woodbridge's other highest-earning unregistered brokers with allegedly stealing over $1 billion from thousands of retail investors, many of them seniors, as part of a massive Ponzi scheme.
In mid-October, Shapiro was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal judge in Miami for leading a $1.2 billion fraud scheme that hurt some 8,400 investors.
In January 2019, a federal court in Florida ordered Woodbridge, its related companies, and Shapiro to pay a combined $1 billion for operating the Ponzi scheme.
