BDaaS stole $6.7 Million By Lying About Data Centers

The Non-Financial Ledger

Two hundred people sent this man their money. Not because they were reckless. Because he gave them a website, a pitch deck, a services agreement, invoices with line items, the logos of Fortune 500 companies, and a promise that if they didn’t like it (for any reason) they could have their money back. That is the architecture of trust. Verdugo built all of it out of nothing, then pocketed what it produced.

More than half of those 200 investors bought more than one chipset unit. They believed enough to go back. Some of them recruited people they knew — family members, coworkers, neighbors — because the “Authorized Dealers” program turned investors into salespeople. The people who trusted them the most became the people they unintentionally misled.

By early 2023, the monthly payments stopped. Investors who had built budget expectations around those returns — between $480 and $2,000 per chipset per month, they’d been told — suddenly had nothing coming in. When they called or wrote to BDX to ask what happened, they were fed excuses. Programming errors. Vendor payment delays. An internal audit. A waiting list for refunds. Every one of those explanations was a lie, directed by Verdugo, designed to buy time while the money was already gone.

Eventually BDX stopped responding altogether. No email. No phone call. No website update. Just silence. Investors were left holding a Services Agreement with a company that had ceased to exist in any meaningful way, for chipset units that may never have been purchased in their name, connected to customers that were never real. The satisfaction guarantee — the specific safety net that the pitch leaned on — was available to four people. Everyone else was on their own.

The damage here is not only the dollars. It is the experience of being told, with paperwork and professionalism and the logos of recognizable companies, that something is real — and then discovering it was performance from the beginning. That kind of betrayal does not end when you accept that the money is gone.

Legal Receipts

These are direct quotes from the SEC’s complaint filed April 6, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Each one is verbatim from the source document.

“BDX did not have any customer contracts, provide any BDaaS services to any customers, or have any source of revenue.”

• This is the core admission the entire case rests on. Every promise Verdugo made to investors — the monthly returns, the chipset deployment, the Fortune 500 partnerships — required paying customers. There were none. The entire revenue model was fiction.
• Without revenue, the only way to pay monthly returns was to use incoming investor money. That is the functional definition of a Ponzi scheme.

“Verdugo misappropriated at least $6.1 million of investor funds, using approximately $591,000 to pay investors and approximately $5.5 million to pay unauthorized expenses, of which approximately $4,684,000 was used to pay unauthorized operational expenses and approximately $854,000 was used to pay unauthorized compensation.”

• Out of every dollar raised, roughly 9 cents went back to investors as “returns.” The remaining 91 cents was spent on things investors never authorized and were never told about.
• The $854,000 in “unauthorized compensation” included payments for a luxury vehicle, transfers to Verdugo’s spouse, and personal credit card charges — none of which were disclosed in the investment materials.

“These invoices were false.”

• Every investor received a personalized invoice showing exactly how their funds would be allocated — to chipset purchase, installation, and programming. The SEC states flatly that those documents were false. Verdugo did not mismanage the money; he fabricated the paperwork describing where it would go.

“When investors contacted BDX regarding missed or lower than expected payments, the Defendants made additional misstatements regarding the payment delays, including blaming programming errors, BDX not receiving customer payments because of changes in business practices by vendors, an internal ‘audit’ to improve BDX’s process, and the creation of a waiting list for refunds.”

• This was a second layer of fraud executed after the first layer began to collapse. When the original lie stopped working, Verdugo directed staff to tell new lies to keep investors from demanding their money back or going to regulators.
• The existence of a directed script of excuses — involving “programming errors,” “vendor” payment delays, and invented audits — shows this was not disorganized incompetence. It was coordinated concealment.

“The satisfaction guarantee was also misleading because BDX was not generating any revenues and had no source of funds — aside from funds from investors — that could be used to provide a full refund if an investor elected to receive one.”

• The satisfaction guarantee was the pitch’s safety net. Investors were told they could walk away and get their money back. The guarantee was structurally impossible to honor from day one because there was never any revenue stream outside of new investor money.
• Only four of the approximately 200 investors received refunds, and those were paid using other investors’ money — meaning the four who got out did so at the direct expense of the people who stayed in.

Public Deception

BDX’s marketing materials, website, written sales presentations, and in-person pitches contained a documented pattern of specific claims that directly contradicted the operational reality of the company.

• Claimed: BDX had established customer relationships with several Fortune 500 technology companies and was already providing BDaaS services to them. Corporate logos for those companies were prominently featured in offering materials. Reality: BDX had no customer contracts with anyone, including any Fortune 500 company, for the entire period investments were being raised.
• Claimed: Investors were promised “100% Success” with all investors earning returns within 90 days of investing. Reality: By early 2023 — less than a year after launch — BDX had stopped paying monthly returns to nearly all investors.
• Claimed: Investors would recoup their full investment within approximately four to nine months through “incredible earnings.” Reality: The expected returns were arbitrary figures with no basis in actual revenue. BDX had no revenue.
• Claimed: A satisfaction guarantee allowed any investor to receive a full refund, less any returns received, at any time after the initial term. Reality: The guarantee was structurally unfulfillable. Only four investors received refunds, and those were paid from other investors’ deposits.
• Claimed: Investor funds would be allocated to purchase, install, and program chipset units, as shown in personalized invoices provided to each investor. Reality: Those invoices were false. Verdugo used investor money for unauthorized expenses and personal enrichment.
• Claimed: When payments stopped, BDX attributed delays to programming errors, vendor payment changes, internal audits, and refund wait lists. Reality: None of these explanations were true. BDX had no revenue, no vendors generating payments, and no legitimate audit process. Verdugo directed staff to make these additional misstatements.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs

The financial anatomy of how investor money was spent reveals a deliberate extraction operation dressed up as a tech business.

• Of the $6.67 million raised, Verdugo misappropriated at least $6.1 million. The gap between what was raised and what was misappropriated — approximately $570,000 — represents funds that may have been spent on the legitimizing facade: renting office space, purchasing some hardware, securing bookkeeping software.
• Approximately $4,684,000 was used for unauthorized operational expenses. The SEC’s complaint does not specify what these operational expenses were, beyond noting they were unauthorized relative to what investors were told their money would be used for.
• Approximately $854,000 was used for unauthorized personal compensation, documented to include: payments for a luxury vehicle; funds transferred directly to Verdugo’s spouse; and personal credit card payments. These expenditures were entirely concealed from investors.
• Only approximately $591,000 — less than 9% of the total misappropriated — was returned to any investors at all, and it came entirely from other investors’ deposits. There was never a revenue-generating operation producing the returns that were promised.
• The Services Agreement told investors that BDX would withhold a 20% service fee on earnings withdrawals to fund operational expenses. Because virtually no investors ever received earnings withdrawals, BDX collected no service fees. Verdugo funded operations entirely from the investor principal that was supposed to be used to buy chipset units.