SEC Sues Two Apex Promoters Over $5 Million Fraud Scheme
The SEC has filed securities fraud charges against Anthony Lotito and Joseph Hagan, two New Jersey residents who pocketed over $5 million from elderly investors through a cryptocurrency investment scam that promised easy money but delivered nothing.
Lotito and Hagan promoted Apex, a fraudulent passive returns scheme launched by publicly traded company Investview in 2019. They did this through their own companies—Revolution Leasing and ScryptMob II LLC—acting as distributors for what they called a "sale leaseback program involving cryptocurrency related technology."
The pitch was simple and seductive. Apex told consumers they could invest in "machines that mined bitcoin" and pocket up to $500 monthly for five years. Investors, mostly elderly people looking for steady income, handed over their money. Many drained retirement accounts to buy in.
Jeremy Roma, an Investview director and Apex founder, hosted marketing webinars promoting the scheme. He claimed the offering wasn't a securities product at all—a false statement that became central to the fraud. The mining machines investors supposedly bought from Apex were then leased back to Safetek, another Roma-led Investview subsidiary, supposedly generating those promised returns.
It was a classic pyramid scheme. Lotito defrauded victims out of over $2 million. Hagan took more than $3.1 million. Both men spent chunks of investor cash on personal expenses. Lotito even paid earlier investors with money from new recruits—textbook Ponzi scheme behavior.
By spring 2020, less than a year after launch, Apex started cracking. Delivery delays piled up. The promised monthly payments plummeted by as much as 80 percent. Lotito and Hagan knew something was wrong by late April 2020. They kept promoting it anyway.
They never told new investors the scheme was failing. They just kept asking for more money from people who believed they were building retirement security.
Apex officially collapsed in June 2020. Management rolled out a convenient story—COVID-19 shipping delays—to explain away investor losses and quietly exit the operation.
What makes this case particularly damaging is the predatory targeting of elderly investors and the brazen deception that continued even as the fraud unraveled. These weren't unsophisticated con men. Lotito and Hagan understood the scheme well enough to know when it was failing. They just chose to keep selling it.
The SEC is seeking disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil penalties, and permanent bars from securities industry participation. For the elderly investors who lost their retirement savings, those remedies offer little comfort.
🤖 Quick Answer
What is the SEC's case against Apex promoters Anthony Lotito and Joseph Hagan?The SEC filed securities fraud charges against Anthony Lotito and Joseph Hagan, two New Jersey residents who raised over $5 million from elderly investors by promoting Apex, a fraudulent passive returns scheme operated through Investview, a publicly traded company, beginning in 2019.
What was the Apex investment scheme promoted by Lotito and Hagan?
Apex was marketed as a sale leaseback program involving cryptocurrency-related technology. Investors were told they could purchase machines that mined bitcoin and receive passive returns of up to $500 per month over five years, but the scheme was fraudulent.
Which companies did Lotito and Hagan use to distribute the Apex scheme?
Lotito and Hagan operated through Revolution Leasing and ScryptMob II LLC, their
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