SEC accuses adviser of scamming $700,000 from sect members

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Evarist C. Amah, who was the general partner of the New Rochelle, New York-based Lumine Fund, with engaging in a years-long scheme to defraud fellow members of his religion, the Grail Movement.

The SEC's complaint alleges that from April 2016 to July 2019, Amah raised approximately $700,000 from his advisory clients using materially false and misleading statements about his investment performance, telling them that he had generated modest returns on their investments. In reality, he had already lost virtually all of their money.

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According to the complaint, Amah also fabricated at least two performance statements to perpetuate his fraudulent scheme and conceal his misconduct. Amah also allegedly violated the fiduciary duties he owed to his individual clients by favoring another client, a fund, over them, using the individual clients’ assets to pay expenses owed by the fund.

The SEC is seeking civil penalties, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and permanent injunctions.

The Grail Movement began in Germany in the late 1940s, inspired by the work of self-proclaimed Messiah Oskar Ernst Bernhardt.

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