Ex-Jefferies Fund Manager Accused in Water-Vend Scam

The US Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington.

(Bloomberg) -- A former Jefferies Financial Group Inc. hedge fund manager was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York for allegedly directing the purchase of nearly $100 million in bonds tied to a water-vending machine business.

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Jordan Chirico is accused of directing the Jefferies fund, 352 Capital, to purchase bonds funding a Washington state business that purported to operate a network of water vending machines, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in New York federal court. But in many cases, the machines didn’t exist, prosecutors allege.

The owner of the business, Ryan Wear, was also charged with fraud. Prosecutors said he helped raise more than $200 million from investors by selling them the machines.

“Ryan Wear raised hundreds of millions of dollars through false promises of a water-vending machine business that became nothing more than a scam that victimized retail investors, including military veterans,” interim Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton said. “Jordan Chirico made matters worse by putting his own financial interests before his professional duties.”

The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case against Wear and his businesses and also made separate allegations that Chirico violated his fiduciary duty by investing the private fund in the alleged scheme. Chirico was aware of red flags and didn’t disclose his conflicts of interest, the SEC said.

Chirico’s lawyer Robert Gage called his client a “victim,” not “the villain.”

“A federal court already dismissed a nearly identical civil case earlier this year in which Leucadia/Jefferies tried to scapegoat our client for an alleged scheme that deceived him along with hundreds of other investors and major institutions,” Gage said. “We look forward to clearing Jordan’s name in court.”

Wear, 49, of Everett, Washington, didn’t respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

Missing Machines

The indictment comes after Jefferies sued Chirico, Wear and others tied to the alleged scheme. The vending business, WaterStation Management, was forced into bankruptcy and has spawned a rash of civil lawsuits from investors who purchased machines. In actuality, most of the machines either didn’t exist or had been sold to more than one investor, according to bankruptcy records.

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Bloomberg News reported in September that federal prosecutors in Manhattan were investigating Chirico. 352 Capital was part of Jefferies’s Leucadia Asset Management.

Chirico, 41, of Carmel, Indiana, is charged with investment adviser fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and securities fraud, which has a top punishment of 20 years behind bars. Wear is charged with wire fraud and securities fraud, both of which carry 20-year sentences.

Prosecutors allege that Chirico had personally invested more than $7 million in WaterStation, but never disclosed his stake while investing millions of the fund’s assets in the company. The government said he also failed to reveal more than $90,000 in monthly payments he received or the $1.6 million he earned for referring friends and relatives to invest.

According to the indictment, Chirico sold his interests back to WaterStation without revealing he was being paid by proceeds of the bond offering originating from the Jefferies fund and deliberately omitted that Wear owed him millions in loans and note repayments.

Chirico had learned of issues at the company by the summer of 2023, and the following year, Wear admitted to him that thousands of the water machines collateralizing the bonds didn’t exist and that he had misappropriated tens of millions of dollars in bond proceeds, prosecutors said. But instead of revealing the issues, Chirico directed the fund to buy another $19 million of additional bonds, the proceeds of which were partially used to repay Chirico, according to the government.

352 hasn’t received any principal payments on nearly $107 million worth of WaterStation bonds, prosecutors said.

The cases are US v Chirico, 25-cr-365, SEC v Chirico, 25-cv-6715, and SEC v Wear, 25-cv-6713, US District Court, Southern District of New York.

--With assistance from Nicola M White and Ava Benny-Morrison.

(Corrects spelling of Chirico in 14th paragraph. Updates with details of charges and allegations by prosecutors.)

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