A Company Built on Other People’s Money

777 Partners and 600 Partners were Miami-based private holding companies co-founded by Joshua Wander and Steven Pasko in 2015 and 2017 respectively. On paper, they looked like a sprawling investment empire: consumer finance, insurance, aviation, media and entertainment. The whole operation depended, at its core, on a single profit engine called SuttonPark Capital.

SuttonPark bought annuities, the kind of structured payment streams that come out of personal injury lawsuits and lottery winnings. It then securitized or resold them. As of 2020, SuttonPark alone generated $184 million (about what 6,100 median-income Americans earn in a year combined) in net income, while the rest of 777 and 600 Partners’ subsidiaries were losing money. SuttonPark’s profits were the only reason the combined operation posted positive numbers at all.

To fund SuttonPark’s annuity purchases, the companies relied on an enormous credit line secured by those annuities. That credit line, provided by a lender the SEC identifies only as “Lender A,” was the engine behind the engine. When Wander and Alfalla started secretly draining it for purposes it was never meant to fund, the whole structure began collapsing in slow motion.

Three Ways They Drained the Credit Line

The SEC identifies three separate methods Wander and Alfalla used to overdraw the credit facility by $300 million (more than the GDP of a small nation). First, between January 2020 and September 2021, they diverted more than $100 million (enough to fund universal pre-K for an entire mid-sized school district for a decade) of borrowed SuttonPark money to other parts of the company, instead of using it to buy annuities as required. Second, Wander ordered more than two dozen illegal cash transfers from a restricted collateral account, building up an internal “loan” balance of nearly $80 million (enough to send 2,600 students to a four-year public university). Third, Wander caused SuttonPark to secretly pledge the same collateral to multiple lenders simultaneously, double-pledging annuities worth more than $146.6 million (enough to buy about 500 median-priced American homes) by September 2021 alone.

By September 2021, the three-pronged misuse had produced a $300 million hole in the credit facility. That is the hole Wander and Alfalla were concealing when they were simultaneously pitching investors on a 10% annual dividend and projecting $132 million in net income for the year. Those projections were built on a foundation they had already destroyed.

Selling a Burning Building as Prime Real Estate

Beginning in summer 2021, 777 Partners and 600 Partners began marketing a preferred equity offering to outside investors. The deal promised 10% annual dividends and used a professional broker-dealer as a placement agent to approach wealthy investors. The marketing materials included a polished investor presentation and supporting diligence documents, all of which Alfalla drafted and Wander reviewed and approved before distribution.

The centerpiece of the pitch was a slide called “Dividend Service Coverage.” It claimed the Issuers earned $113 million (what roughly 2,200 median-wage workers earn in a full year) in net income in 2020, projected $132 million (enough to pay off about 8,800 average student loans) for 2021, and asserted that net income would cover the anticipated dividend obligation sixfold. Every person who read that slide and wrote a check had no idea the company behind it had already destroyed the profit engine those numbers depended on.

The $33 Million Personal Withdrawal

The use-of-proceeds lie was the most brazen element of the fraud. The investor presentation stated explicitly that the money raised would go toward “general corporate purposes” and would “reduce inefficient funding facilities” and “support growth trajectory.” These were phrases Wander approved. On September 21, 2021, the same day investors wired in their money, Wander instructed the companies to transfer $24,914,722.13 (enough to buy a private jet, which is exactly the kind of thing this money went toward) to his personal bank account and $8,028,681.54 (what a minimum-wage worker would earn in roughly 600 years) to Pasko’s personal brokerage account.

Investor A invested $40 million (enough to house 1,000 homeless individuals for a full year) after its investment adviser reviewed the materials, met with Wander and Alfalla, and concluded the company presented a “low credit risk” that would generate “substantial cashflow from SuttonPark.” That adviser had no idea SuttonPark’s credit line was $300 million overdrawn. The SEC found this was not an oversight. Wander and Alfalla actively concealed the overdraw from every investor.

They Kept Selling After It Got Worse

By the time Investor B was pitched in summer 2022, the situation had deteriorated dramatically. Rising interest rates in early 2022 had caused the company to suffer $504 million (enough to build 12 new public elementary schools in every major American city) in losses on financial assets in a single quarter, producing a quarterly operating loss of $382 million (roughly what it would cost to give every public school teacher in Texas a $10,000 raise for a year). Wander and Alfalla knew these numbers. They sent Investor B the exact same investor presentation, with zero updates, in August 2022. Investor B then invested $14 million, and came back to invest another $3 million in February 2023, having never been told the company had nearly collapsed the previous spring.

What Money Cannot Measure: The Human Cost of This Scheme

There is a category of damage that never shows up in SEC complaints, settlement documents, or disgorgement orders. It is the cost measured in the kind of loss you cannot quantify: trust destroyed, futures derailed, institutions gutted. The 13 investors in this offering were not random speculators picking lottery tickets. They were institutions and individuals who hired professional advisers, reviewed due diligence documents, took calls with company executives, and made rational decisions based on the information they were given. That information was fabricated.

Consider what Investor A’s adviser experienced. They did their job. They reviewed the investor presentation. They sat in rooms with Wander and Alfalla. They concluded, in good professional faith, that the company presented “low credit risk” and would generate “substantial cashflow.” They then recommended to their client that $40 million (enough to create a permanent endowment that could fund a small college scholarship program in perpetuity) be invested. Every step of their process was contaminated by lies the defendants were actively constructing and maintaining. The adviser’s professional reputation and fiduciary duty to their client were weaponized against them without their knowledge.

The fraud also carried a specific kind of institutional betrayal. SuttonPark’s profits were built, in part, on annuity payments that originated as tort settlement payments to injured people, the kind of structured payments that personal injury victims receive to cover medical bills and lost wages over years or decades. Wander used those payment streams as collateral, then double-pledged that collateral to multiple lenders simultaneously. The underlying financial product that built this company had human beings at the end of it. The double-pledging jeopardized the financial infrastructure that SuttonPark depended on, and SuttonPark’s collapse rippled outward to every employee, every contractor, every vendor tied to that operation.

By May 2024, Wander and Pasko had resigned. A restructuring firm had taken over. The two companies that employed hundreds of people across consumer finance, insurance, aviation, and media were no longer operated by anyone with equity or long-term skin in the game. They were managed by hired professionals trying to sort through a wreckage. Every person whose job, retirement account, pension, or investment was tied to the health of these entities paid a price that will never appear in the SEC’s disgorgement calculations.

Their Own Words Condemned Them

These are direct quotations from the SEC complaint, sourced from internal text messages and sworn allegations. The defendants knew. They said so themselves.

“The deficit is like $75m.” — CFO Damien Alfalla, via chat to Wander and Pasko, February 2021; while the companies were actively preparing to market the investment offering to outside investors

“Last week was obviously a good week for us. So thank you for your collective efforts. However, we still have a $300m+ borrowing base deficiency that needs to be addressed between now and 12/31/21. . . . Effectively, we need to cure the borrowing base by at least $100m per month if we are trying to spread it out.” — CFO Damien Alfalla, text message to Wander and Pasko, September 25, 2021; sent four days after collecting $211M from investors while concealing this exact deficiency

“[I]t is still to [sic] vast to expect with confidence that we will be able to raise preferred equity in the amount of $300m+. I think we need to discuss alternative plans/contingency measures . . . . It is going to be a difficult for me to continue working here if at year-end the situation does not dramatically improve. . . . Today alone we need several millions that we don’t have and this is a payroll week and liabilities are growing at an astronomical pace due to our aviation sector not providing sufficient cash to cover its obligations.” — CFO Damien Alfalla, text message to Wander and Pasko, November 15, 2021; two months after closing the first round of investor capital and while continuing to market the offering to additional investors

“Wander falsely represented in the Investor Presentation and in the Term Sheet that the Issuers would use the Offering proceeds for general corporate purposes. In fact, Wander intended to, and ultimately did, cause the Issuers to divert approximately $33 million of investor funds to Wander and Pasko personally.” — SEC Complaint, Paragraph 8; describing the use-of-proceeds fraud that occurred on the same day investor capital was received

“Pasko nevertheless failed to confirm the accuracy or completeness of the representations in the Term Sheet, the Investor Presentation, or the Diligence Materials before approving the form of Subscription Agreement, signing the investor Subscription Agreements, or accepting $8,028,681.54 out of the proceeds of the September 2021 raise.” — SEC Complaint, Paragraph 84; describing Pasko’s knowing inaction despite awareness of the overdraw and his personal financial stake in the fraud’s success

This Fraud Did Not Happen in a Vacuum

The investors in this offering were institutional-grade. They had professional advisers. They had due diligence processes. They had resources. And they still lost serious money because the executives above them held all the information and chose to weaponize that information asymmetry. This is exactly how financial fraud operates as an engine of economic inequality: the people at the top of the information chain extract wealth, and the damage travels downward.

The $237 million raised in this offering did not evaporate. It went somewhere. A combined $32,943,403.67 (enough to fund a regional food bank for over 20 years) went directly into Wander’s and Pasko’s personal accounts. The rest was absorbed into a company that was already insolvent, used to paper over a $300 million hole in a credit facility that the executives had themselves created through misuse. The investors who expected 10% annual dividends received nothing. Every employee, every vendor, every counterparty tied to this enterprise absorbed losses that flowed from the decisions of three people at the top who already knew the game was over.

The SEC’s complaint explicitly notes that the companies’ financial position “continued to worsen” after the initial capital raise. They raised a December 2021 tranche of $9 million (what a median American worker earns in about 180 years) and an August 2022 tranche of $14 million (roughly 350 years of minimum wage labor) using the same fraudulent materials. The decision to continue marketing to additional investors after Alfalla had texted that the situation required “$100m per month” just to stabilize is the decision that transforms a bad business situation into a serial fraud targeting new victims.

The structure of this fraud also reveals how inequality in legal and regulatory access compounds financial loss. The Credit Facility lender did not discover the problem until “late 2022,” more than two years after the misuse began and more than a year after the $300 million overdraw had fully materialized. During that entire period, ordinary safeguards that were supposed to protect the lender, monthly compliance reports, borrowing requests, collateral schedules, were being deliberately falsified by Wander and Alfalla and signed without verification by Pasko. The checks that were supposed to stop this failed because the people in charge of the checks were the ones running the scheme.

The Numbers Laid Bare

The People Responsible and the Bodies That Can Stop Them

The Named Defendants

• Joshua Wander, age 44, Miami, FL; co-founder and co-managing partner of 777 Partners; resigned May 6, 2024; SEC seeks permanent ban from serving as officer/director and from securities markets participation.
• Steven Pasko, age 77, Miami, FL; co-founder, co-managing partner of 777 Partners, sole managing partner of 600 Partners, CEO of SuttonPark Capital; resigned May 6, 2024; SEC seeks permanent ban from serving as officer/director of any public company.
• Damien Alfalla, age 49, Miami Beach, FL; CFO of both 777 Partners and 600 Partners; CPA registration in New York expired May 31, 2025; resigned February 15, 2024; SEC seeks permanent officer/director ban and securities market ban.
• 777 Partners LLC, Delaware LLC, Miami, FL; co-named defendant; subject to disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains.
• 600 Partners LLC, Delaware LLC, Miami, FL; co-named defendant; subject to disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains.

The Watchlist: Who Oversees This

• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission): Filed this complaint in October 2025. Track enforcement progress at sec.gov/litigation.
• DOJ (Department of Justice): Securities fraud of this scale often runs parallel to DOJ criminal investigations. No criminal charges have been alleged in this source; monitor for parallel proceedings.
• FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority): The broker-dealer placement agent involved in marketing this offering operates under FINRA jurisdiction. The question of what the placement agent knew and when deserves scrutiny.
• State Regulators (Florida and Delaware): Both entities are incorporated in Delaware and operated in Florida. State securities and corporate regulators have independent authority to act.

For the first time ever in the history of this website, the FBI is being linked as a source for this story: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/news/founder-and-cfo-of-investment-firm-777-partners-charged-with-500-million-fraud-scheme

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