The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General for the past year has been conducting a noncriminal consumer protection investigation of ABC Capital, the Philadelphia-based company that has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme for failing to renovate homes in distressed neighborhoods in Baltimore and Philadelphia for its foreign investors.
The office said it is looking into whether ABC Capital has been engaged in a “pattern or practice of unfair or deceptive conduct” in violation of the Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, and is considering whether regulators should take action “to prevent further harm to Pennsylvania consumers from Respondent and/or obtain restitution for such consumers.”
The Baltimore Banner reported in November that in dozens of lawsuits, investors in foreign countries and states across America say they paid ABC Capital to acquire homes for them — through a hands-off process in which ABC would renovate and maintain the homes with the investor receiving guaranteed rent — but that ABC did not follow through. Some of those lawsuits charge the company is running a Ponzi scheme.
Additional investors from South America to Israel say they are in a similar position but unfamiliar with the American legal system and don’t know how to seek redress. Tenants also say they were subjected to squalid conditions in homes managed by ABC.
Jay Walsh, who ran ABC Capital and a related company, IPP USA, has brushed off criticisms,…
