A Miami financial advisor and his firm have been ordered by a Florida judge to pay $18.45 million to a Venezuelan citizen who says the advisor stole $22 million from him. The plaintiff is one of several Venezuelans who said the Miami firm misappropriated their money.  

The plaintiff said that between 2017 and 2021, Andrew H. Jacobus and his firm, Finser Asset Management, engaged in a scheme to steal client assets, promising to invest them in a private fund, the Corfiser SIMI Fund, that would offer a high return on investment of 12% a year, payable monthly, according to a lawsuit filed in the Miami-Dade Circuit Court. Instead, Jacobus and his firm stole the money for his personal use, the client said.

“In addition, Jacobus convinced plaintiffs to open and invest over $4 million with an account at Charles Schwab Corporation, for which he later fraudulently and without plaintiffs’ authorization obtained unfettered access by preparing a forged power of attorney, liquidated the securities and siphoned all the proceeds and cash to himself. To conceal his fraud, Jacobus created and provided plaintiffs with fictious account statements purporting to show the investment portfolio and related balances, when in fact the account had significantly smaller balances,” the complaint says.

The plaintiff, Fermin Suarez, is a Venezuelan national who lives in Panama City. Also listed as plaintiff is the holding company Suarez controls for his investments, High & Future Investment.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jacobus, a resident of Coconut Grove, is the sole owner, president and chief compliance officer of Finser, a company in Coral Gables, Fla. Jacobus made all the investment decisions for the Corfiser SIMI Fund, according to an administrative proceeding by the SEC. 

In its last form ADV, filed in 2020, Finser said it had $79.3 million in assets under management, $52.6 million of which was discretionary, and $64 million of which was for 30 wealthy clients. Finser has not been registered with the SEC since January 2021.

In 2020, the SEC censured Jacobus and his firm and made them pay $61,808, saying the firm charged clients performance fees without meeting a high water mark for performance and commingled clients’ assets in the Corfiser SIMI fund.

“Contrary to representations made to investors in the fund,” the SEC said, “Finser, through Jacobus, placed the Corfiser SIMI Fund assets in Finser’s own brokerage account at [an unnamed brokerage firm] instead of in a separate account in the name of the client, the fund, or in Finser’s name as agent or trustee for the fund. Between January 2014 and November 2016, Finser and Jacobus commingled the Corfiser SIMI Fund assets in [Finser’s brokerage account], which also held non-fund assets.”

According to Suarez, Jacobus persuaded him to put $18 million in the Corfiser fund over four years starting 2017. In one case, while getting Suarez to invest $5 million in a fixed-term product, “Jacobus provided a materially false PowerPoint presentation purporting to show the high level of returns for the fund. The ‘Relative Performance’ section of the PowerPoint claimed that the fund for the years 2012 through 2018 outpaced the S&P 500 index consistently every single year,” the complaint says. Jacobus also stymied Suarez’s attempts to communicate with the fund managers, saying it was a conflict of interest, according to the complaint. Suarez said he lost confidence in Jacobus when the advisor asked to borrow $750,000 in December 2020.

Jacobus is facing similar suits in the same court that are still open. A claim by medical doctor Manuel Egea says Jacobus and Finser misappropriated $9.5 million. A claim by Beatriz Aleman and James Mathison, also Venezuelan citizens, said they lost more than $2 million with Jacobus and Finser. Another Venezuelan resident, Tubalcain Alexis Morales, says Jacobus and Finser took $600,000 (this last case is closed and was apparently settled.) The complaints were all made in the Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit for Miami-Dade  County.

Jacobus did not return calls for comment, nor did Suarez’s attorney.