NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. regulator on Thursday charged Matrix Capital Markets LLC and its founder, Nicholas Mitsakos, with having fraudulently raised money from investors who were misled into believing the San Francisco firm was larger than it was and had a successful track record.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Mitsakos solicited investors by touting annualized returns ranging from 20 percent to more than 66 percent that were actually based on a hypothetical portfolio, and claiming he invested as much as $60 million when he never managed anywhere near that sum.
Mitsakos raised about $2 million from a Cayman Islands-based asset manager as a result of his fraud, and misappropriated about $800,000, the SEC said in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)