The Non-Financial Ledger: What Was Actually Stolen

The SEC complaint counts dollars. This section counts something harder to add up.

Picture the 150 people who wired money to Nathan Fuller. Many of them were not wealthy. They found the investment the way most ordinary people find financial opportunities today: through someone they trusted. A friend. A family member. Someone who had already invested and was told they could earn a referral bonus for bringing in new money. Fuller built his entire distribution network on those personal relationships, which means every investor who got defrauded also became, unknowingly, a link in the chain that pulled someone else in.

These investors were explicitly passive by design. The joint-venture agreements Fuller had them sign required nothing of them except to hand over their money and wait. They were not traders. They were not crypto experts. They were people who were told a professional had built technology that would do the work for them. Fuller’s pitch was engineered to appeal to people who felt locked out of wealth-building: you don’t need to understand any of this, just trust the bots, trust the AI, trust the license and the bond and the FDIC insurance. Every one of those assurances was fabricated.

When investors started noticing they could not withdraw their own funds, they did not learn the truth. They received a letter. The letter, generated using ChatGPT, told them their accounts had been transferred to a company called “Blockchain Audit Solutions” and were being audited. It told them their money existed, was safe, and would be accessible soon. It was entirely fictional. Fuller did not invent a technical glitch or blame market conditions. He invented an entire company, gave it an official-sounding name, and sent a letter on its letterhead to people who were already afraid. That is not a business failure. That is a choice, made deliberately, to keep people in the dark for as long as possible so Fuller could continue spending their money.

The funds he spent included at least $1 million on a house, money on gambling, on trading cards, on travel, on a Jeep. He showed investors fake account balances on an app he built for that purpose. One investor was shown a statement reflecting a profit of over 334% from October 2023 to March 2024. The bank shown on that statement held no such account. The account did not exist. The profit did not exist. The 334% was a number Fuller typed into a document to keep that investor from asking too many questions.

Many of these 150 people spread across nine states and two foreign countries are still waiting to understand what happened to their money. Some may never recover it fully. The financial loss is real and documented. But what the complaint cannot fully capture is the specific texture of being deceived by someone who studied you first, who knew exactly which words and credentials would make you feel safe, and who kept lying even after you asked directly.

Legal Receipts: What the Complaint Actually Says

The following quotes are taken verbatim from SEC Complaint, Case No. 4:26-cv-4237, filed May 28, 2026, in the Southern District of Texas.

“Tell us how much money you want to make and let our bots figure out the rest for you.”
— Privvy Investments website, controlled by Fuller throughout the Relevant Period (Complaint ¶20a)

• This statement, published on a public-facing website Fuller controlled the entire time, is a direct solicitation claiming passive, unlimited profit was available to anyone who handed over money.
• The SEC complaint documents that no functioning automated trading system existed. The bots did not generate the returns claimed, and approximately 97% of investor funds were never used to trade crypto assets at all.

“With AI bots and a neural net, your profitable returns are limitless and your risk are [sic] limited.”
— Privvy Investments website (Complaint ¶20d)

• This claim was made publicly and repeatedly. The SEC alleges that the bots “did not function as claimed” and their code “did not include stop-loss or AI functionality.”
• The claimed 3% maximum loss limit, which Fuller repeated in text messages, phone calls, YouTube videos, and emails, was a fabrication built into marketing language, not actual software behavior.

“At this point now, things have been so profitable that we can pretty much guarantee certain ROIs in contracts.”
— Fuller, October 2022 YouTube video (Complaint ¶22b)

• This statement was made on a publicly accessible YouTube video in October 2022, the same month the scheme began. Fuller explicitly claimed he could contractually guarantee returns on investment.
• The SEC complaint documents that no legitimate trading generated profit, and that approximately $5.5 million of what investors received was simply other investors’ money recycled in Ponzi-like payments.

“He then used ChatGPT to generate a phony letter from Blockchain, which he sent to investors in June 2024 to quell concerns about investors’ inability to withdraw assets. The letter falsely told investors that their accounts had been transferred from Privvy to Blockchain and that the accounts were being audited and required ‘KYC verification’ before balances could be liquidated and moved to ‘a newly formed liquidation trust.'”
— SEC Complaint ¶27

• By June 2024, investors were already unable to access their funds. Rather than disclose the fraud, Fuller fabricated an entirely new company and used an AI text generator to produce official-looking correspondence designed to stall investors further.
• The use of “KYC verification” and “liquidation trust” language was calculated: these are real industry terms that would sound legitimate to anyone unfamiliar with the specific entities involved.
• This action demonstrates that the fraud was actively managed and extended through deliberate deception well after it became unsustainable, not abandoned or wound down.

“Fuller provided the certificate to at least one investor but altered it to falsely reflect $5 million in professional-liability insurance.”
— SEC Complaint ¶25

• Privvy held a real biBERK insurance policy for approximately two months, but that policy covered commercial general liability and specifically excluded professional liability coverage.
• Fuller took a real document, altered the dollar figure from $2 million to $5 million, and changed the coverage type before presenting it to an investor as proof of protection. This is documentary fraud layered on top of securities fraud.

Public Deception: The Gap Between the Pitch and the Reality

Fuller built a layered system of false assurances, each designed to answer a specific investor concern and remove any reason to hesitate before sending money.

• Claimed: AI-based trading bots operated autonomously to identify and execute high-frequency arbitrage trades across crypto platforms. Reality: The bots did not function as described. Their code contained no AI or stop-loss functionality. Only $380,000 of $12.3 million raised was used to buy crypto assets, and that activity generated zero profit.
• Claimed: Returns of 40-50% or more within 30-45 days were typical; 100% returns in 21 days had been documented; 80% average monthly returns were achievable. Reality: No trading profits existed. What investors received as “returns” were Ponzi-like payments sourced from other investors’ capital.
• Claimed: Fuller held a money-transmitter license issued by the Texas Department of Banking. Reality: No such license existed.
• Claimed: A surety bond secured investor funds. Reality: No surety bond existed.
• Claimed: Investor funds were FDIC insured. Reality: FDIC insurance does not cover crypto investment schemes, and no such coverage applied.
• Claimed: An insurance policy from “Texas Guarantors & Securities” protected investor funds. Reality: Texas Guarantors & Securities was a company Fuller invented. It did not exist.
• Claimed: A $5 million biBERK professional-liability policy was in place. Reality: Privvy held a $2 million commercial general liability policy (not professional liability) for approximately two months. Fuller altered the certificate to change both the amount and the coverage type before showing it to investors.
• Claimed: Investor account balances shown in the Privvy app and on emailed statements reflected actual profits from actual trading. Reality: The balances were fabricated. The bank and digital currency company listed on account statements held no such accounts. “Digital Currency Capital Group,” shown on statements, was a fake entity Fuller created with a name chosen to resemble a real investment firm.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs: Where the Money Actually Went

The SEC complaint documents precisely how Fuller distributed the $12.3 million he collected, and the allocation tells the full story of the scheme’s priorities.

• Of $12.3 million raised, only ~$380,000 (approximately 3%) was deployed into actual crypto asset purchases. This trading generated zero profit and was conducted without the bots Fuller claimed to be using.
• At least $6.2 million was misappropriated directly for personal expenses: a house priced at approximately $1 million, gambling, trading cards, travel, a Jeep, and additional undisclosed personal spending.
• Approximately $5.5 million was used to make Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors, creating the illusion of a functioning, profitable enterprise and keeping existing investors from demanding full withdrawal.
• Fuller’s fee structure compounded the extraction: initial agreements allowed him to retain 10% of trading profits; later versions added a clause permitting him to retain 1% of principal and interest as an additional fee. Given that no real profits existed, these fee structures were applied against a fiction.
• Fuller operated under at least two assumed business names (Gateway Digital Investments and Privvy Investments) and formally incorporated Privvy in Wyoming in July 2023, creating a layered structure that added apparent legitimacy while centralizing control entirely in one person.