OAKLAND, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A federal class action lawsuit charging Umpqua Bank with aiding and abetting a massive, decades-long Ponzi Scheme may proceed to jury trial on behalf of a class of investors, according to a judge’s ruling from Friday. The Court’s decision clears the way for over a thousand harmed investors to pursue their legal claims against Umpqua Bank in a single trial. Oakland-based Gibbs Law Group, along with Silver Law Group, represent PFI investors in the class action lawsuit.
The victims assert that Umpqua Bank knew that Professional Financial Investors (“PFI”) and its principals, Ken Casey and Lewis Wallach, were using new investor money to pay existing investors and to line Casey’s and Wallach’s personal accounts, yet continued to provide banking services to PFI for nearly a decade. The massive PFI Ponzi Scheme was broadly uncovered in 2020, upon Casey’s death, when the executor of his estate discovered that rather than paying investors returns from real estate investments as represented, PFI was surviving only by continually raising new investor money to pay existing investors.
The investors’ lawsuit against Umpqua Bank specifically charges that bank employees ignored multiple red flags and took egregious steps to prop up the scheme. According to the lawsuit and recently unsealed case records, some of the bank’s actions include:
- An Umpqua Bank employee admitted that she removed Casey’s name from PFI’s bank…
