Adam B. Rundle, a former resident of Annapolis, Maryland, did not invent a fake adviser to reassure the person he was selling to. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, he took the identity of a real one. From at least November 2021 to January 2024, Rundle impersonated a licensed securities professional in order to persuade an investor to hand over money, and sold that investor what was described as a Simple Agreement for Future Equity in Robinvest, LLC, a company Rundle himself created and controlled. He told the investor the instrument guaranteed the principal investment and a return of 4 percent compounded annually. He raised approximately $1.5 million. He did not invest the funds as promised. According to the complaint, he misappropriated the entirety of them. On 10 September 2026, the SEC filed charges against him in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, docketed as 1:26-cv-03590.
The SEC’s complaint charges Rundle with violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and seeks injunctive relief, civil penalties, and disgorgement with prejudgment interest. The investigation was conducted by the Commission’s Philadelphia Regional Office. No parallel criminal action has been announced, and the allegations have not been tested in court.
A SAFE Cannot Guarantee Anything
The instrument at the centre of the case is worth explaining, because the promise attached to it was structurally impossible. A Simple Agreement for Future Equity was designed by the startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2013 as a way for early-stage companies to raise money quickly without setting a valuation. The investor gives cash now and receives equity later, when the company raises a priced round. That is the entire mechanism.
A SAFE is not debt. It carries no interest rate, no maturity date and no repayment obligation. If the company never raises another round, never sells and never lists, the SAFE may convert to nothing at all. The instrument exists precisely because it strips out the protections a lender would insist on, in exchange for speed and simplicity. Y Combinator’s own documentation is explicit that a SAFE is not a loan.
So a SAFE that guarantees the return of principal plus 4 percent compounded annually is not an unusual SAFE. It is a description of something else entirely, wearing the name of a familiar startup instrument. Anyone who had encountered a genuine SAFE would have recognised the contradiction immediately, which is a useful measure of what the investor here was relying on instead.
The Borrowed Credentials
What the investor was relying on, according to the SEC, was the identity of a licensed securities professional who had nothing to do with any of it. Impersonating a licensed person is a distinct step beyond exaggerating one’s own credentials. It hands the target something they can verify, and the verification comes back clean, because the person being checked is real, is licensed and does have a record in good standing.
The public systems that exist for exactly this purpose are built around names and identification numbers. An investor who looks up a licensed professional through the SEC’s adviser search or FINRA BrokerCheck will find the genuine record for the genuine person. Nothing in those systems confirms that the individual sitting across from the investor is the individual whose record is on the screen.
The victim of the impersonation is a second party here, separate from the investor who lost the money. A licensed professional whose identity is used this way generally learns of it only when an enforcement action becomes public, or when a stranger contacts them about money they never received.
One Investor, $1.5 Million, Two Years
The shape of this case differs from most offering frauds in the volume of victims. There is one investor, and the relationship ran from November 2021 to January 2024, a little over two years. The SEC puts the amount at approximately $1.5 million and alleges the whole of it was misappropriated.
A single-investor fraud sustained across two years requires something a mass-marketed scheme does not: continuous personal contact and continuous reassurance. Where a Ponzi operator manages hundreds of relationships at arm’s length through statements and a website, an arrangement like this one runs on one relationship, maintained directly, with the borrowed identity of a real licensed professional sitting underneath it the entire time.
That structure also explains the guarantee. An instrument promising principal protection plus a modest fixed return, 4 percent compounded, is not designed to excite. It is designed to sound safe and unremarkable, which is what a single investor placing a large sum with someone they believe to be a licensed adviser would reasonably want to hear.
What the Complaint Charges
The complaint alleges that Rundle defrauded the investor by impersonating a licensed securities professional, by falsely representing that the investor would be purchasing a SAFE that guaranteed the principal investment and a 4 percent annual compounded return, and by failing to invest the funds as promised while misappropriating all of them. The matter is at the filing stage. The litigation will be led by the Philadelphia Regional Office.
For an investor, the checks that would have surfaced this are not complicated, and they are the same ones regulators publish repeatedly. Verify that the person in front of you is the person whose licence you looked up, not merely that a licence exists under that name. Read what the instrument you are buying actually is. And treat a guarantee attached to an equity instrument as the thing to ask about first, because equity instruments do not carry guarantees.
What the Record Does Not Say
Several things the public filings do not establish are worth naming, because their absence shapes what can fairly be reported. The licensed securities professional whose identity was allegedly used is not named, and there is no indication that person had any knowledge of or involvement in the conduct. The investor is not identified either, and the complaint does not describe how the two came into contact.
The Commission has not announced a parallel criminal case, which distinguishes this matter from most offering frauds of comparable size. Nothing in the record indicates whether Rundle has ever held a securities licence of his own, or whether Robinvest, LLC conducted any business at all beyond receiving the money. Those questions may be answered as the litigation proceeds. At the filing stage they are open.
Conclusion
Adam Rundle told an investor he was a licensed securities professional. He was using a real licensed professional’s identity, so any check would have come back clean. He sold a SAFE in a company he had created and controlled himself, and told the investor it guaranteed the principal and 4 percent compounded annually, which is not something a SAFE can do. Over two years he collected roughly $1.5 million. He invested none of it. The SEC filed in Maryland on 10 September 2026. The licensed professional whose name made the whole thing credible was not a party to any of it.
