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Brendan Ross Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison
Brendan Ross, once the darling hedge fund manager of alternative small business lending, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud. Ross was indicted five years ago in 2020 for a scheme he carried out through his firm Direct Lending Investments.
“Ross allegedly caused the monthly asset values of the funds to be cumulatively inflated by over $300 million over the course of about four years,” the original indictment stated. “By fraudulently inflating the value of the funds, Ross was able to collect millions of dollars in fees he otherwise would not have been able to charge to clients, according to the indictment.”
Ironically, clues about Ross’s scheme surfaced in a 2017 tell-all book authored by an entrepreneur that had borrowed money from his fund. When the author broke the news that his lending business was going bust, Ross reportedly told him: “I am like, literally staring over the edge. My life is over.”
Approximately one year later, Ross resigned from his own firm and the company went into receivership.
View PostBig Think Capital Issues Statement on Resolution of Litigation with Centrex and Forth
New York, NY – 7/8/2025 – Big Think Capital announces today the resolution of its litigation with Centrex and Forth in California federal court. As part of the settlement, Big Think Capital has agreed to issue the following public statement:
“The Lawsuit commenced by Big Think Capital against Centrex and Forth in California federal court has been dismissed by Big Think Capital. Big Think Capital does not dispute that the data incident that compromised the Forth and/or Centrex platforms was caused by and attributable only to malicious third-party actors who were not associated with Centrex or Forth. Big Think Capital accepts as true that neither Forth nor Centrex had any involvement in the data incident at issue. Any prior statements made by Big Think Capital to the contrary are retracted and withdrawn.”
This statement resolves the matter fully and finally between the parties.
Media Contact:
Michael DiRienzo
Director Of Communications
Big Think Capital
mike.dirienzo@bigthinkcapital.com
(516) 475-2066
California Bill Seeks to Rein in Debt Settlement Companies That Target MCAs / Business Loan Borrowers
AB-1166 in California has been quietly moving through the legislature in California since February. The bill seeks to amend the Fair Debt Settlement Practices Act to include commercial financing recipients with consumer borrowers as a covered and protected group. Per the bill, “Commercial Financing means an accounts receivable purchase transaction, including factoring, asset-based lending transaction, commercial loan, commercial open-end credit plan, or lease financing transaction intended by the recipient for use primarily for other than personal, family, or household purposes.”
If it became law, debt settlement providers would be prohibited from engaging in misleading practices, have to provide specific disclosures, allow the business owner to cancel the debt settlement agreement at any time, have to provide monthly statements, itemize their compensation, and more.
The full text can be read here. It recently passed through the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions committee on July 2.
View PostCFPB’s Funding Cut Almost in Half
The current Administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that passed Thursday includes a paragraph that modifies the CFPB’s annual funding budget. In 2010, The Consumer Financial Protection Act, which created the CFPB, stipulated that that no more than twelve percent of the annual total operating expenses of the Federal Reserve System shall be transferred to the agency. The new law has amended that down to 6.5%.
For perspective, the CFPB received $729.4M from the Fed in FY 2024 but could have drawn up to $785.4M. Had the new cap already been in place, the agency would’ve only been entitled to take up to $425M.
All eyes had been on the CFPB in the small business finance industry where massive regulations relating to how such companies collect data were supposed to have gone into effect this month. The agency ultimately suspended compliance with the rules by one year and said it intends to rewrite those rules in the interim. The agency is required by the fifteen year-old statute to implement some form of data collection on small business lending.
View PostNMEF Achieves Largest Quarter and First Half in Company History
[July 2, 2025, NORWALK, CT] – North Mill Equipment Finance, LLC (“NMEF”), a leading commercial equipment lessor located in Norwalk, Connecticut, today announced that it achieved the largest quarterly and first half origination volumes in its history. Originations hit a record $277 million in the second quarter, bringing first half 2025 production to an unprecedented $520 million, an increase of over 100% versus first half 2024. Including the acquisition of Pawnee’s assets that went onto NMEF’s balance sheet on April 1, total origination volume for the second quarter was $607 million and for the first half of 2025 was $850 million.
For the first half of 2025, NMEF also reported a meaningful increase in credit quality, evidenced by a higher weighted average FICO of 745. The largest equipment categories were medical (23%), franchise (13%), construction (12%), and IT (8%). Long haul trucks comprised less than 2% of volume. Corporation only transactions represented over 25% of volume.
David Lee, Chairman and CEO of NMEF, commented, “Reaching these new highs is a direct result of executing our strategy to diversify and scale. We’ve invested heavily in building a platform that supports more sophisticated transactions, and it’s gratifying to see that translate into stronger credit profiles, larger deals and further industry diversification. Moreover, a majority of our dollar volume now consists of mid-ticket, fully underwritten transactions.”
Mark Bonanno, President and Chief Revenue Officer, added, “Our record growth is made possible by the trusted long-term relationships with both our NMEF brokers and our Taycor vendor partners. By staying agile and solution-oriented, we’re able to meet their evolving needs and help drive mutual growth. We’re excited to keep this momentum going into the second half of the year.”
Tom Lyle, EVP and COO, stated, “In less than two years NMEF has doubled from $1 billion to $2 billion in assets under management. The internal restructuring of our operations, reporting lines, and integration of Pawnee’s talented employee base, have NMEF well positioned to continue scaling to our goal of $5 billion by the end of the decade.”
About North Mill Equipment Finance (NMEF)
NMEF is a national, premier lender who works with third-party referral (TPR) sources to finance small to mid-ticket equipment commercial leases and loans ranging from $15,000 to $3,000,000 and up to $5,000,000 for investment grade opportunities. NMEF accepts A – C credit qualities and finances transactions for many asset categories including but not limited to medical, construction, franchise, technology, vocational, manufacturing, renovation, janitorial and material handling equipment. NMEF is majority owned by an affiliate of InterVest Capital Partners. The company’s headquarters are in Norwalk, CT, with regional offices in Irvine, CA, Voorhees NJ, and Murray, UT. For more information, visit www.nmef.com. One of NMEF’s controlled affiliates, BriteCap Financial LLC, is a leading non-bank lender providing small businesses with fast, convenient financing alternatives such as working capital loans since 2003 from its main office in Las Vegas, NV. For more information, visit www.britecap.com.
View PostdeBanked Celebrates 15 Year Anniversary
deBanked celebrates its 15th anniversary this month. Launched in 2010 as a blog under the name Merchant Processing Resource, its original focus was on payments and merchant cash advances.The site went through several iterations and began transitioning to the name deBanked in the Fall of 2014.
A look at the MCA content portal in 2010:
If you’re interested in some of the pre-2020 headline history, you can review this old 2019 post we made here.
Thanks for reading and cheers to another 15 years??????
View PostACH, Wire, and Soon Stablecoin Transfers?
“Many of the users out there today are not aware of stablecoins, or not interested in stablecoins, and they should not be,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s SVP of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies to CNBC. “It should just be a way in which you move value, and in many cases, is going to be an infrastructure layer.”
Stablecoins, blockchain-based units typically pegged to the US Dollar, are taking off. According to Visa, for example, $3.7 trillion worth of stablecoins were transacted in the last 30 days alone. Since there’s no speculation angle to be gained from holding them, the value of using stablecoins versus other methods of payments is primarily speed and cost. As an infrastructure layer, traditional lenders may want to keep an eye on developments there. For example, where ACHs may become too costly or impossible to utilize efficiently, USD-> Stablecoins-> USD could become a viable mechanism to sweep funds from a traditional bank account to a third party. Borrowers may not ever even need to know or be aware that blockchain rails are being used to transmit payments. Lenders too need not be burdened by crypto and instead merely leave the conversion of one to the other and back to a payment service.
This is not the domain of edgy upstart fintechs any longer either. According to American Banker, “The progress of the GENIUS Act has spurred banks to forge stablecoin strategies, with Citigroup, Bank of America and dozens of others considering launching their own stablecoin, joining a stablecoin consortium or both.” Additionally, stablecoin issuer Circle just applied for a national bank charter.
🚨34% of ETH transactions now involve stablecoins, driving network activity near all-time highs pic.twitter.com/iTWBCHZT6b
— matthew sigel, recovering CFA (@matthew_sigel) June 30, 2025
While much of the early blockchain utopian ideals speculated that commerce may be transacted with bitcoin, using the rails to transact in dollars may be a much more near-term and universally accepted method.
View PostThe Story of a Debt Relief Scammer
Listen to this podcast that tells the story of how a scammer purporting to offer debt relief crushed small businesses and haunted an entire financial services industry in the process. Names are changed but it’s based on true events.
