The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a cease and desist order against R.L. Aggregates and Diversified Lending Group Inc. for soliciting investments from the public without the requisite license and using fake documents for its operations.
The SEC also asked the company to close down its Internet presence relating to the transactions and investment scheme covered by the order.
The company, along with its operators, directors, officers, representatives, salesmen and agents, has also been prohibited from transacting any business involving funds in its depository banks, and from transferring or disposing of its assets.
The order extends to R.L. Aggregates’ directors Roberto S. Llorente, Jennylyn M. Clemente, Patricip B. De Villa, Carlo S. Mamaril and Alvin C. Camanero, its operators, officers, representatives, salesmen, and agents including Ashley Reyes, Maya Gonzalez, Randy Dela Cruz and Kenneth Daniel Papa.
The SEC issued the order after finding that R.L. Aggregates has been enticing the public to invest in the company in exchange for guaranteed returns of 1 percent per day or 30 percent per month over a lock-in period of three months.
The scheme requires potential investors to invest or deposit an amount ranging from P1,000 to P500,000, with dividends to be paid out every 15th and 30th of the month.
With this, an investor with a capital of P1,000 will supposedly earn P150 every 15 days, or a total of P1,900 after three months. Over the same period, those who invest P500,000 would receive a total of P950,000. The scheme involves the sale and offer of securities to the public in the form of investment contracts, SEC said.
R.L. Aggregates is registered with the SEC and holds a Certificate of Authority to operate as a lending company. However, it has never secured a secondary license to solicit investments from the public.
An investigation by the SEC’s Enforcement and Investor Protection Department (EIPD) showed that R.L. Aggregates has been using an altered and falsified copy of its Articles of Incorporation (AoI), stating that “the corporation shall direct solicit, accept or take investments/placements from the public and shall issue investment contracts.”
The SEC also found that R.L. Aggregates declared that it is a mother company of cooperative and lending groups that caters to agriculture, small businesses and small-scale mining in Masbate.
“In this case, R.L. Aggregates intentionally used or allowed the use of a falsified AoI to make it appear to the investing public that it was duly authorized by the Commission to solicit, offer, accept, sell and/or take investments from the public. Through the falsified AoI, R.L. Aggregates was able to conveniently offer and/or sell unauthorized securities from investors by means of fraud,” the SEC said in its order.
The SEC said that R.L. Aggregates’ authorized capitalization was only P1.5 million, which would make its business model “not sustainable and will likely cause grave or irreparable injury or prejudice to the investing public.”
“Moreover, the EIPD also pointed out that respondent’s act of taking advantage of the pandemic to refuse any visit/transaction at its main office in Taytay, Rizal by its investors, and its insistence that investors only transact online, is questionable and suspect,” the order read.