The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two more Florida executives with participating in a truck investment venture that allegedly bilked investors out of $112 million.
Ricardi Celicourt, 40, of Coconut Creek, and Brisly Guillaume, 39, of Boynton Beach, were named in a lawsuit filed by the SEC on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The lawsuit charges both with violations of securities registration and broker-dealer registration provisions.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that over a more than two-year period — April 2021 until June 2023 — Celicourt and Guillaume helped raise nearly $109 million from 1,500 investors, mainly from Haitian-Americans, through an unregistered securities offering by Royal Bengal Logistics (RBL) of Coral Springs, Florida.
According to the complaint, Celicourt, who was RBL’s vice president of business development and investor relations, and Guillaume, who was director of business development and investor relations for the trucking and logistics firm, sold investments to the investing public. The SEC claims neither had been registered as brokers or dealers or associated with a registered broker-dealer. Court documents also state that the two executives received approximately $1.3 million in transaction-based bonuses for their roles in the alleged Ponzi scheme.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s SAFER website states that Royal Bengal Logistics’ common carrier authority…
