News Story

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil injunctive action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging Charles C. Slowey, Jr.; Endeavor Partners, LLC; Endeavor Capital Management Group, LLC; Edward D. Puttick, Sr.; and Advanced Planning Securities, Inc. with violations of the antifraud provisions of the securities laws in connection with the sale of unregistered securities representing interests in four real estate funds to investors, many of whom were unsophisticated retirees and senior citizens.

According to the SEC's complaint, the securities fraud was orchestrated by Charles C. Slowey, Jr., 65, of Oak Beach, NY, and two companies controlled by Slowey, Endeavor Partners, LLC and Endeavor Capital Management Group, LLC. The SEC alleges that the four real estate funds were managed by Endeavor Partners or Endeavor Capital Management Group.

The SEC alleges that these three defendants made misrepresentations to investors who invested approximately $12 million in the funds, and, further, that these defendants misappropriated investor proceeds. The SEC also alleges that Advanced Planning Securities, Inc. (APS) a formerly registered broker-dealer firm in Smithtown, N.Y., and its former president Edward D. Puttick, Sr., 70, of Setauket, New York, failed to conduct sufficient due diligence prior to authorizing brokers to sell interests in the funds to investors, including unsophisticated senior citizens.

According to the SEC's complaint, Oldham, Harris, and OHI solicited investors by means of invitations to free lunch or dinner "seminars" at restaurants. On several occasions, Slowey joined Oldham and Harris at the gatherings to help them make sales of Endeavor Securities to potential investors at the seminars or in meetings at the OHI office scheduled shortly afterwards. Many of the investors to whom Oldham, Harris, and OHI sold these investments were elderly and of limited means and few had previously invested in private placement securities or securities based on distressed or subprime mortgages.

The SEC alleges that when the funds began to have increasing financial difficulties, Slowey continued to make false statements to investors. In June, July, and November 2006, Slowey asked investors to reinvest their maturing interest in the Endeavor Funds even though he knew that the funds had lost substantial sums of money, and owned only a handful of properties worth far less than the $10 million initially deposited by investors.

The SEC's complaint seeks a final judgment permanently enjoining the defendants (except APS) from future violations of certain provisions of the federal securities laws, ordering them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest on a joint and several basis, and ordering them to pay financial penalties.