GPB Fails to Provide Investors with Tax Forms and Gets Sued Two More Times!

Stoltmann Law Offices, P.C. has been representing investors in FINRA arbitration cases involving the GPB Funds since March 2019, and we have filed dozens since. There is one common thread with GPB over the last year or so.  They consistently oversell “good news” which is followed up with more bad news.  Recently, GPB announced it had hired a new CFO – Someone who was going to right the ship and get those audited financials done so that GPB can comply with necessary SEC financial filing rules. Brokerage firms and their brokers who do not want to be sued for this mess, continuously promulgate the “good news”, trying to stave off investor complaints.  All that happens no matter the spin, is more bad news which brokerage firms and brokers do not tell their clients.

On  February 10, 2020 , GPB announced it would not be providing investors with IRS Form K-1 any time soon. So, as the lucky owner of units in a GPB fund, investors will have to wait to file their tax returns until GPB figures out how to send investors reliable tax documents.  Another mess created by GPB are for investors who received surprise IRS Form 1099-Rs because they or their brokers did not act fast enough last fall when GPB was bounced off of various trading platforms, including Charles Schwab. What this means is, those investors are being taxed as if they took a distribution of their GPB asset from their IRA.  So, if you invested $100,000 in a GPB fund in your IRA, and did not have it transferred to an IRA custodial firm, whatever the book value of the fund was on your statement, say $60,000, will be treated as an IRA distribution, and the investor likely will have to pay income tax on that amount. GPB is the gift that keeps on giving!

About a week after GPB announced that it could not even get tax forms to investors, another lawsuit was filed in Delaware Chancery Court against the fund by a group of angry investors.  This lawsuit, Lipman v. GPB Capital Holdings, LLC, Case No. 2020-0054, is a derivative suit filed against GPB on behalf of investors and the GPB Auto and Holdings II funds. The first paragraph of this complaint refers to David Gentile, Jeffrey Lash, and Jeffrey Schneider as “scoundrels who never should have been allowed to run a legitimate company.” Only days later, GPB was sued in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York by Volkswagen of America regarding control over three dealerships. This lawsuit relates back to David Rosenberg, who was the head of these three Volkswagen dealerships. He blew the whistle on GPB to the SEC, warning the regulator that GPB was engaging in financial fraud. GPB terminated him and Volkswagen alleges that this termination violated the agreement between GPB and the car company. The more things change with GPB, the more things stay the same. At the end, it is the investors left holding the bag.

We are representing investors in FINRA Arbitration claims against the brokerage firms that failed to perform adequate due diligence into the GPB Funds, and who misrepresented or underplayed the speculative risk of investing in these funds to their clients. To date, we have filed claims against David A. Noyes, Ausdal Financial, Madison Avenue Securities, National Securities Corp., Arete Financial Management, Money Concepts, Newbridge Securities, Geneos Wealth Management, and Kalos Capital. At least sixty brokerage firms sold GPB to their clients. All of these firms had notice before approving GPB for sale to investors that GPB’s conflicted structure was a recipe for fraud and abuse, and they approved of the offerings anyway so they could collect the massive commissions.

If you or anyone you know invested in any the GPB Automotive Fund, GPB Fund Holdings II, GPB Waste Management Fund, GPB Cold Storage Fund, or any other GPB Fund, please contact our Chicago-based law firm for a free, no obligation consultation with a securities attorney, at 312-332-4200, or visit our website at www.stoltmannlaw.com.  We are a contingency fee law firm which means we do not get paid unless you do!