The fraud at A.G. Morgan Financial Advisors reached a federal courtroom on April 3, 2026. Vincent J. Camarda, 62, the chairman and CEO of the Massapequa, New York advisory firm, stood in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and pleaded guilty to two federal counts: securities fraud and investment adviser fraud. He had run the scheme for seven years, from January 2017 through December 2024, systematically misappropriating the retirement savings of clients who trusted him with their financial futures.
The same morning, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint naming Camarda, his firm A.G. Morgan Financial Advisors, LLC, and company president James E. McArthur as defendants in an offering fraud that raised at least $138 million from 431 investors, a majority of whom were elderly and financially unsophisticated. The criminal plea alone carries restitution of at least $160,022,836, forfeiture of $6,639,498, and up to 20 years in federal prison. For some of those 431 people, the destruction was total: the SEC found that certain investors lost their entire life savings to funds Camarda controlled.
How A.G. Morgan turned Par Funding’s $500 million collapse into a template for its next fraud
The fraud did not begin with promissory notes or private equity funds. Between 2017 and 2020, A.G. Morgan raised more than $75 million from over 200 advisory clients by placing them into securities issued by Complete Business Solutions Group, Inc., operating publicly as Par Funding. The company marketed itself as a lender to small businesses. It was, in fact, a Ponzi scheme exceeding $500 million that the SEC would eventually halt through emergency action.
Camarda and McArthur sold Par Funding instruments without authorization from the registered broker-dealer they were affiliated with, a regulatory violation in its own right. More consequentially, in 2017, Camarda personally borrowed approximately $750,000 directly from Par Funding — an arrangement that created a direct financial conflict between his personal interests and his fiduciary duty to clients. He disclosed this to none of them. The SEC charged A.G. Morgan, Camarda, and McArthur in June 2022 for these violations. Par Funding’s CEO, Joseph LaForte, was sentenced to 15.5 years in federal prison in March 2025. Par Funding itself pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud in March 2026.
The five funds that held nothing close to what Camarda and McArthur promised their elderly clients
Beginning around June 2020 — as Par Funding’s collapse became unavoidable — Camarda and McArthur launched what would become the larger and more damaging phase of the fraud. They created five private equity funds, issued promissory notes against them, and sold those notes to their advisory clients. The sales pitch was uniform and specific: the investments were “safe,” “low-risk,” and “conservative,” and the money would be spread across diversified sectors.
In practice, four of the five funds invested entirely in a single high-risk mining venture. The fifth invested exclusively in Buzz’d Express Coffee, a drive-thru coffee startup operated by Camarda’s own son. Camarda told clients he was placing their retirement funds across several mining companies; he placed everything in one operation, which subsequently failed to meet interest payments owed to investors. He promised food-service diversification; what clients actually funded was an untested startup with no public financial history. When the funds failed, the SEC reports that some investors lost everything — in certain cases, the entirety of what they had saved.
Between June 2020 and at least December 2023, 431 investors placed at least $138 million into these instruments based on those representations.
How Camarda spent client money on surgery, jewelry, and personal debt while their savings disappeared
Federal prosecutors documented in the plea agreement that the misappropriation extended well beyond failed investments. Client funds paid for plastic surgery for Camarda himself. They paid for jewelry, travel, and luxury goods. Some of the money went directly toward paying down Camarda’s personal credit card debt — a detail that removes any remaining ambiguity about intent.
The asset picture today is stark. Both Camarda’s office building in Massapequa and his personal residence in Amityville are in foreclosure proceedings. The court has ordered restitution of at least $160,022,836 and forfeiture of $6,639,498. Neither figure guarantees that defrauded investors will recover meaningful amounts; schemes of this scale rarely yield full recovery for victims.
McArthur, who served as the firm’s president and chief compliance officer throughout the scheme, remains a defendant in the SEC’s civil case. He has not entered a criminal guilty plea. His litigation continues in the Eastern District of New York.
Twenty-three FINRA complaints, seven million dollars in arbitration losses, and still no arrest until April 2026
The regulatory record preceding the criminal charges tells a story of escalating alarms that did not produce action quickly enough. In August 2022, the CFP Board imposed an interim suspension on Camarda’s Certified Financial Planner designation following the SEC’s Par Funding charges. FINRA began logging investor complaints against Camarda at a striking rate: 23 filings between April 2024 and July 2025, with clients collectively seeking $25.4 million in damages.
Multiple FINRA arbitration panels ruled against Camarda and McArthur during this period. In one award, Camarda was ordered to pay $1.4 million in compensatory damages, $11,249 per month, and $227,500 in attorneys’ fees; McArthur was ordered separately to pay $443,354 in compensatory damages and $70,000 in attorneys’ fees. Across multiple arbitration cases, FINRA panels ordered A.G. Morgan and its principals to pay more than $7 million to clients. When Camarda and McArthur refused to pay those awards, FINRA suspended both men indefinitely from the securities industry. None of this halted the Camarda Funds fraud, which continued into December 2024.
Conclusion
Camarda began his career in the securities industry in 1994, when he was registered with American Express Financial Advisors. Thirty years later, he pleaded guilty in federal court to stripping 431 clients — most of them elderly — of at least $138 million through two overlapping fraud schemes that ran the full length of his tenure at A.G. Morgan.
When asked whether Vincent Camarda would be able to repay the victims, his attorney, Glenn Obedin, told reporter Cecilia Dowd of News 12, “We would certainly be hopeful about that.
The agencies that certified him, the regulator that suspended him, and the arbitration panels that ordered him to pay millions were all too slow to stop him. Sentencing is scheduled for August 2026. He faces up to 20 years.
