A former Colorado investment advisor has been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly defrauding investors of nearly $1 million.
Michael S. Moses, 51, of Centennial, Colo., lied about his credentials and the performance he achieved as an RIA while raising $974,741 from seven individual investors in 2014, according to a lawsuit filed by the SEC in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Moses, the sole proprietor of Moses Investment Company LLC in Greenwood Village, Colo., lost virtually all the money by May 2015 through trading and failure to implement risk controls in his company’s fund, called the WAKE fund, according to the SEC.
Among the lies Moses told investors to win their trust was that he served as portfolio manager of a $750 million global macro fund in 2007, and that he achieved a 24 percent return during the 2008 financial crisis, according to the SEC. In reality, the SEC says, Moses had “very limited” portfolio management experience and never worked as a fund portfolio manager.
“In fact, Moses worked for the Atlanta-based [global macro fund] only as a contractor and only for six months,” the SEC said in the lawsuit. The fund “briefly tested Moses’ strategies in certain foreign markets, before terminating its contract with Moses because the strategies did not work.”
Moses also told investors that he was personally invested in the WAKE fund, which was untrue, the SEC said.
Moses was registered as an investment advisor in Colorado from July 2013 to May 2017. He created Moses Investment Company in 2013.