Daryl Heller Pleads Guilty in $770 Million ATM Investment…

Investors Were Told ATMs Would Fund Monthly Payments

Heller controlled Paramount Management Group, Heller Capital Group and Prestige Investment Group. Prestige-related managers oversaw more than two dozen investment vehicles known as the Prestige and WF Velocity ATM Funds. Investors were told their capital would be used to buy and operate ATMs or Bitcoin teller machines through Paramount, with revenue from kiosk fees funding monthly payments over six or seven years.

The structure appeared to connect each investment to physical machines and recurring transaction revenue. The SEC’s 35-page civil complaint says most funds accepted investments in increments of $52,000 or $104,000. One offering represented that a $52,000 investment would pay $1,081 each month for 84 months, a total of $90,804. Two funds involving Bitcoin ATMs required $120,000 increments and promised fixed monthly distributions for six years.

Investors had no role in selecting or operating the machines. Their funds were pooled, while Heller decided when funds opened, how much they would raise and where investor cash would go. The SEC says the interests were securities because participants depended on Heller, Prestige and Paramount to produce the returns.

Thousands of the Machines Did Not Exist or Were Idle

Heller admitted that a substantial share of the money was not used to buy the promised kiosks. Instead, funds went toward monthly payments to earlier investors, payments to other ATM investors, personal expenses and business debts. Thousands of machines said to have been acquired for investors either did not exist or were not operating, leaving them unable to generate the revenue shown in investor materials.

False records overstated both the size of Paramount’s network and the income it produced. Those records were used to reassure existing investors and attract new capital. The mechanism resembles other investment frauds built around a revenue-producing asset, including a $275 million scheme involving water machines that allegedly did not exist and a commodity pool case involving fabricated returns. In each, account records or promised assets concealed the gap between reported and actual performance.

The paperwork helped make that gap difficult to see. According to the SEC complaint, investors received account statements, distribution notices, purported ATM serial numbers and bills of sale. Some also received tax forms reporting their supposed share of ATM income and depreciation. Meanwhile, new investments and high-interest short-term loans were used to support distributions when operating revenue fell short, increasing the amount the business needed to raise simply to continue paying existing obligations.

The scheme became unsustainable in April 2024 when the funds stopped supplying Paramount with substantial amounts of new investor money. Monthly payments then stopped. Paramount went out of business in December 2024 after months of promises that investors would be paid or bought out.

The SEC Says 2,700 Investors Were Drawn In

The criminal case puts unpaid principal at approximately $402 million. The SEC’s separate lawsuit says about 2,700 people invested, most of them retail investors. Many were members of Amish and Mennonite communities around Lancaster, where Heller lived and built the companies. The regulator alleges that investors were reached through personal connections, seminars, podcasts, YouTube videos, emails and presentations.

The SEC also alleges that more than $185 million was misappropriated for Heller’s benefit, including spending on a beach house and other businesses. Those claims remain pending in the civil case and were not converted into findings merely by the criminal plea. The regulator is seeking disgorgement, penalties, injunctions and a bar preventing Heller from serving as an officer or director. The SEC filed the $770 million civil case in September 2025, alongside an indictment that originally charged Heller with one securities-fraud count and four wire-fraud counts.

The case demonstrates why an investment described as asset-backed can still depend entirely on the operator’s records. Investors did not independently control the kiosks, verify whether specific machines existed or receive transaction fees directly. They relied on entities under common control to acquire the assets, report revenue and transfer distributions. The appearance of physical collateral therefore offered little protection once the records connecting investor capital to operating machines were false.

This Was an Investment Fraud Using Kiosks as the Asset Story

The references to Bitcoin teller machines should not be confused with the more common crypto ATM scam, where a victim is instructed to deposit cash into a kiosk and send cryptocurrency to a criminal’s wallet. The FBI recorded nearly $389 million in crypto ATM scam losses during 2025, but Heller’s conduct involved selling passive investment interests in funds that supposedly owned revenue-generating machines.

The underlying warning sign was the same one seen across asset-backed Ponzi schemes: scheduled distributions continued even though the promised business did not produce enough cash. In a recent futures case, an operator who promised monthly returns from an algorithm that did not exist received 51 months in prison. Heller’s sentencing will address a much larger loss total, but the recovery question remains separate. Restitution creates a legal obligation to repay victims; it does not establish that sufficient assets exist to cover $402 million.