A real estate firm accused of bilking investors in numerous home renovation projects in Philadelphia has been the subject of a yearlong, noncriminal investigation by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, recently released records show.
ABC Capital, formerly based in Northern Liberties, solicited foreign investors for cash to fuel well over 1,000 house-flipping projects in Philadelphia, Baltimore and elsewhere over the past decade. However, in recent lawsuits, a string of ex-investors allege ABC took their money but in some instances never delivered on promised work, effectively operating as a Ponzi scheme.
The company was the focus of a December 2022 Inquirer article that documented numerous tenants living in shoddily renovated homes that were linked to ABC. At that time, an attorney representing one former investor said he had been contacted by an investigator with the state Attorney General’s Office regarding ABC. The agency, however, refused to comment then.
But affidavits filed this month in response to a right-to-know request from the Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit news site that profiled ABC in November 2022, confirmed that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection had launched an investigation in response to complaints about the company last January.
The affidavits show the office has issued subpoenas to substantiate claims of possible “unfair or deceptive conduct” by ABC, and interviewed “witnesses and victims” about the…
