Tag Archives: Ponzi scheme

seeking rubicon

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So when the Philadelphia Business Journal articles came out about Scott and Lynne Mason and Rubicon Wealth Management and Orchard Park Real Estate Holding LLC, one of the first things I did was go to the Rubicon website to see what they were about. https://www.rubiconwealth.com/ was the website and when I plunked it into Google I came up empty:

Then yesterday the Philadelphia Inquirer article broke more of the story wide open (totally worth a subscription to read the article)….

So I think the Rubicon phone number is the same from when they were in Bala Cynwyd, before Blue Bell, and it is just ported as a VoIP number. Who knows if there is still an actual office? 980 Jolly Road in Blue Bell is an office complex- think this is the website: https://www.980jollyroad.com/

This is Rubicon’s Blue Bell office address:

980 Jolly Road Suite 115

Blue Bell, PA 19422

Phone: 610-668-4615

Fax: 610-668-2890

Mon-Fri: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Sat-Sun: By Appointment

Anyway, I was getting stuck trying to figure out where the cache of the Rubicon Wealth Management website was. I figured it had to be somewhere, it’s the Internet, right? So I asked a techie friend what the name of the website was that captures these old things if they are entered. They texted me back “Internet Archive : Wayback Machine.”

Well dayyyummmmmnnn, let me introduce you to Rubicon Wealth Management as they have it: https://web.archive.org/web/20231002005659/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/

Now I have zero clue how long this stuff lives on this site, so here are some links and you’re welcome:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231202141449/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/resource-center/videos

https://web.archive.org/web/20231211153343/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/blog

https://web.archive.org/web/20230922140436/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/services

https://web.archive.org/web/20230922160450/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/resource-center/presentations

https://web.archive.org/web/20231202160527/https://www.rubiconwealth.com/meet-the-team

So where to begin? Before I get to the website, allow me to start with one of their little website video snippets, geared towards women. As a woman, considering the accusations, this is particularly despicable. A lot of women of a certain age, are not necessarily investment savvy, and can be too trusting.

Then I found this other website called wallmine https://wallmine.com/adviser/235961/rubicon-wealth-management-llc

And that led me to the info on the former Chief Compliance Officer who left a while back I guess. He was the Compliance Officer before Scott Jeffrey Mason donned the cape of regulation, which is truthfully kind of dumb because where is the separation of church and state?

former Chief Compliance officerDownload

So people were asking who was on the Rubicon website. Well here are your screenshots:

So Malvern Capital Management who was in the Inquirer article is literally right in Malvern. Here is a link to their website. They are also potential victims, aren’t they? Like what about the people related to Scott and Lynne Mason? You know when you have “family” in the financial business, it’s common that they manage their family members’ assets as well, isn’t it? Or you do business with neighbors, friends, the folks you met at a civic association meeting, it’s all good over a round or two of golf, a cocktail party, etc? What will the fallout be exactly? This is actually a tragedy that will possibly have several acts, right?

Meet The Team
Malvern Capital Management

This whole thing takes your breath away. I can still find nothing at all on the Orchard Park Real Estate Holdings LLC except the LLC basics on the Commonwealth of PA website.

Well that’s all I’ve got but I hear the 19035 is all abuzz. Also, so we are clear: I am not following this for the salaciousness alone, I think this is wrong. People entrust their life savings to people and they expect honesty and a moral compass, right? I realize the cases here are just beginning but remember, the Philadelphia Business Journal articles and the Philadelphia Inquirer article both mentioned that “clients have been in contact with FBI and SEC investigators who are seeking information about Rubicon”, he said” to directly quote Joseph DiStefano’s Inquirer article.

I will be honest and say out loud that this is so sad what the Main Line has become. And the Nouveau Main Line is ripe for these issues because these people move there now because it’s an exclusive-ish suburbia in Lower Merion Township and no one knows the history at all. And a perennial problem? People from one side of the river quite literally in Montgomery County never pay attention to the other side of the river. It’s like when I was growing up, the Main Line crowd and the Chestnut Hill crowd didn’t mingle, and neither of them mingled much with Ambler, Abington, Dresher, Jenkintown, Huntingdon Valley, Bucks County, etc.

The First Amendment as always allows me my opinions.

Here’s yesterday’s post:

mind blown: lower merion is new grifter capital of the main line?

mind blown: lower merion is new grifter capital of the main line?

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Goodness ….WHAT, I say WHAT is in the water in Lower Merion Township? It’s like the summer of rather interesting Lower Merion location articles, n’est-ce pas? August 2nd, I wrote about Josh Verne, touched on Joseph La Forte and other certain Lower Merion denaro-centric scandals…

BUT STOP THE FREAKING PRESSES AGAIN THERE IS A NEW SCANDAL. This one will be a peach. Hat tip to the Philadelphia Business Journal for breaking the story wide open and public…but the guy they mention in the article is not the only one suing their “advisor”…AND once again, yes more fine upstanding Lower Merion Township residents? Perhaps the Magic Kingdom has priced itself out of residents with moral compasses? And I think the Philadelphia Inquirer article is going to be a fan favorite (and the subscription is much more reasonable, sadly, and I like and appreciate the Philadelphia Business Journal as well.)

https://www.inquirer.com/business/scott-mason-rubicon-ponzi-investor-complaint-20240813.html

Yup. Mind blown.

But wait…more articles…from the Philadelphia Business Journal who popped out with these ahead of the Inquirer. All articles are interesting…very interesting….very interesting….

https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2024/08/06/blue-bell-rubicon-wealth-lawsuit-stanley-tulin.html

Philadelphia Business Journal Philadelphia-area wealth manager sued for allegedly stealing $20M from client By Jeff Blumenthal – Senior Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal Aug 6, 2024

And yet another PBJ article came out about others filing suit.

https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2024/08/08/blue-bell-scott-mason-rubicon-orchard-lawsuit.html

Philadelphia Business Journal: More alleged victims, millions in losses emerge in Philadelphia-area wealth manager case By Jeff Blumenthal – Senior Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal Aug 8, 2024

Of course I am legit wondering aloud what in the Sam Hell is in the water in Lower Merion these days. And OMG the woman the articles filing suit is the guy’s aunt according to press so far?

Here’s an article from 2005 that shows the beginnings of the SEI relationship with Rubicon/Mason:

https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2005/05/23/story3.html

Philadelphia Business Journal: SEI tries franchise concept By Larry Rulison  –  Staff Writer May 23, 2005 Updated May 19, 2005, 11:30am EDT

But this is not the most interesting thing of all, is it? If you cross reference an obituary notice you can verify that this is not the only Mason who has had issues, isn’t it? Like father like son?

(And yes the First Amendment, the SEC, and the New York Times can back this ALL up, can’t it?)

sec.gov_files_litigation_litreleases_lr15124Download

I can’t find much on the Orchard Park whatever business other than this:

However…when I went perusing the Montgomery County dockets I found three cases all filed within the past few weeks plus the SEI related one:

I went and pulled what I could find for Rubicon Wealth Management/Scott Mason. There was a Rubicon Securities on FINRA that was in Bala Cynwyd that looks like it closed up shop in 2002 and when you try to clickaroony on the Rubicon Wealth Management website , https://www.rubiconwealth.com/ it is “not found”. It disappeared apparently as a website? I found some stuff on Zoominfo.

40130Download
883851 RubiconDownload
individual_1023965Download

Society snippets of yore, tell their own story, right? Social climbing and needing to belong? Just go noodle through Newspapers.com with their names in it.

I am feeling sarcastic towards Lower Merion Township and their new found “celebrities” but I am seriously wondering what is in the water. In all seriousness, this is kind of disgusting and I think like the other stories of the Nouveau Main Line it is going to grow legs. As an issue, it’s like all these Madoff types came to town isn’t it? It’s sad, gross, disgusting and God don’t like ugly too, isn’t it?

This is all so Ponzi-esque and Madoff-esque isn’t it?

As I close this out, I ask again if perhaps the Magic Kingdom has priced itself out of residents with moral compasses? Is it SO important to live high SO high on the hog? And since I started sharing the Philadelphia Business Journal articles I have received some unpleasant private messages from the 19035. To those people I say wake up. Before this is over how many people will be hurt including their innocent family members? Philadelphia Business Journal and the article about Mason’s Aunt. OMG

This continues to grow legs, including a blip in the Glenside Local. This seems like it will be a tall tale of many articles? The Main Line is so not what it used to be….

But buy more popcorn, Lower Merion’s ugly underbelly is getting another scratch this summer, eh?

The postscript is for those not familiar with that Squires club there was quite an amusing article in Philadelphia Magazine in 2016:

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/07/30/squires-the-last-boys-club

Squires: The Last Boys’ Club

High-stakes gambling. Near-death experiences. Semi-naked golf. For decades, what happened inside the exclusive, strictly all-male Squires golf club stayed in the clubhouse — until now.

By Tom McGrath· 7/30/2016, 9:00 p.m.

about 60 pipe bombs? in public storage in malvern?

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Last night a headline broke on Malvern Patch:

p1

ps

Actual photo taken inside Public Storage in Malvern months ago

That really freaked me out because until a couple of months ago, I was a customer of that Public Storage – I had needed some extra storage when I first relocated permanently to Chester County.  It was clean and easy to get to and not creepy feeling the way a lot of those self storage places are.   The few months I was there we rarely saw other people, and given all the shows on television and cable about storage units (Storage Wars) and auctioning off abandoned storage units, you can’t help but wonder what people store there.

While a customer there I saw mostly people who were storing clothes and books and stuff like me and once in a while people who were antiques and collectibles dealers who didn’t have store fronts, and did shows.  Occasionally you would see an orphaned piece of  furniture or a lamp no one wanted left inside the front doors by the elevators, but that was it.

So I was floored when I saw Malvern Patch’s headline last night about the sleepy yet clean Public Storage and I am equally shocked this morning that yes, the bomb squad borrowed from Montgomery County (apparently Chester County doesn’t have one?) detonated BOMBS last night!  Sweet Jesus!  How long were they in the storage facility?  The risk to the public with this if not for law enforcement could have been crazy.

This also makes you think about all the other self storage facilities around here on and off that Route 30 corridor, doesn’t it? Remember that developer of Malvern (who isn’t getting the Whip Tavern is also bringing more self storage to Malvern called “Cube Smart”.)

So how do these self storage companies really know what is being stored?

Mr. Bomb Storage in the news broken by Malvern Patch (EXCELLENT job by the way in getting that out there) ends up is a Ponzi schemer named  “Istvan Merchanthaler, a 42-year-old man facing federal charges related to a $2 million Ponzi scheme.”

And Patch reports that there was a lot of law enforcement there last night.  Given what it was about, I have no doubt in my mind ATF was there too.

I hope they throw another book at this freak Istvan Merchanthaler for those explosive devices.

Here is the updated story from Patch (Malvern Patch really does do local news well as opposed to a lot of other Patch sites), and from Michael Price at The Daily Local:

Bombs Detonated in Park After Storage-Unit Seizure

A series of explosions shook houses Thursday night as authorities destroyed pipe bombs in East Whiteland’s Valley Creek Park.

By Pete Kennedy and Eric Campbell  Email the authors  March 7, 2013

malvern patchTwo bomb-disposal units were among the multiple emergency response teams working at the Public Storage facility in Frazer Thursday evening after a large amount of explosives was found inside a storage locker.

FBI agents and bomb technicians worked in and around the building, located on the unit block of Lancaster Avenue, as local police and fire departments controlled traffic, maintained a perimeter and kept ready to respond to any incidents.

Around 8:30 p.m., bomb squads from Montgomery County and Philadelphia began hauling the explosives from the storage facility to nearby Valley Creek Park. The explosives were transported inside large metal containers on trailers, and each trip involved a convoy of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles…..

Shortly after 11:15 p.m., as a light snow fell, the first in a series of explosions shook houses and woke sleeping residents miles away. At least five explosions occurred before they stopped around 1:15 a.m. Friday.

There were also reports of an explosion earlier in the day, around 7 p.m., but employees at businesses near Public Storage said they did not hear anything at that time.

The FBI had notified East Whiteland Police that they planned to execute a warrant within the township, but the circumstances that led the agency to Malvern are unclear. The Daily Local News reports that the storage locker was registered to Istvan Merchanthaler, a 42-year-old man facing federal charges related to a $2 million Ponzi scheme. Harman said agents told him a Maryland resident had been arrested in connection with the bombs.

Federal agents remove explosives from Malvern storage locker

 By MICHAEL N. PRICE mprice@dailylocal.com

Posted: Thursday, 03/07/13 10:35 pm Updated: Thursday, 03/07/13 10:43 pm

EAST WHITELAND — Federal agents and bomb squad units removed a high amount of explosives from a storage locker Thursday night in the unit block of Lancaster Avenue in Malvern.

According to a high ranking official close to the investigation, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the Montgomery County and Philadelphia bomb squads removed about 60 pipe bombs from a storage locker at Malvern Public Storage and transported them to a nearby park, where they were to be detonated.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the ongoing and sensitive nature of the investigation, said that the storage locker was registered to 42-year-old Istvan Merchanthaler, a Chester County man facing federal charges in connection to a Ponzi scheme that officials say defrauded investors of about $2 million over the past seven years.  Officials close to Merchanthaler’s case said the suspect was connected to similar explosive investigations in other states, and added that he is facing charges in multiple jurisdictions throughout the east coast….The United States Attorney’s Office announced additional fraud charges against Merchanthaler Thursday

Ponzi schemes are bad enough without adding BOMBS to the mix. So what was the goal here? Defraud some people and blow some others up? Wow. Nice guy this  Istvan Merchanthaler, right?