Between 2014 and 2019, the fund managers raised roughly $52.8 million from about 129 investors across ten states, pitching Greenpoint Tactical Income Fund as a safe “income” vehicle that would generate strong, stable returns and allow withdrawals as needed.
In reality, the fund’s assets were overwhelmingly illiquid and speculative: a pile of literal gems and minerals along with stakes in high risk private companies, including a now-defunct environmental remediation firm called Amiran Technologies.
By mid-2018, the fund was claiming a net asset value of about $135 million (more than triple its cost basis) despite the fact that over 95% of these “gains” existed only on paper and were, according to the SEC, largely fictitious.
This fantasy valuation had very concrete consequences. Management and related entities extracted about $13.7 million in fees and payments from the fund between 2014 and early 2019—fees calculated on the inflated asset values rather than on real, realized returns.
Less than 5% of the fund’s reported gains were actually realized; almost all the cash that funded the managers’ paydays came from fresh investor money.
The investors were not faceless institutions. Many were older people on fixed incomes, persuaded to put their life savings into these funds. Hull even convinced the board of a small public library to commit its assets.
When they later tried to redeem, they were told there was “no liquidity,” unless, conveniently, new investors walked through the door. That’s not “income investing”; that’s trapping people in a burning building and charging them a fee for the smoke.
Harms Hidden in the Fine Print
The SEC describes a pattern of self-dealing that would make a loan shark blush.
When the fund ran out of cash, after paying hefty management and “information” fees to insider-controlled entities, Hull and Nohl stepped in with short-term loans to the fund, some allegedly carrying interest rates exceeding 100% per year. These related-party loans were not disclosed to investors or even to the fund’s auditor.
At the same time, they manipulated the purported value of key assets. The fund’s stake in Amiran was marked up from about $4.2 million at the end of 2015 to over $46 million by June 2018… even as Amiran’s subsidiary was defaulting on its credit line and the company’s financials showed mounting losses, not “strong growth.”
The gem and mineral portfolio (thousands of specimens, with most of the value concentrated in about 30 pieces) was appraised under conditions that would be comical if they weren’t so destructive. Nohl interfered with appraisals, leaned on appraisers for higher numbers, rejected “too low” appraisals in favor of older, higher ones, and cherry-picked values that maximized reported gains and fees.
In other words, the managers controlled the official story about what the assets were “worth,” and then paid themselves handsomely based on the story they wrote.
Harms to Trust and Democratic Life
What we see here is a domestic, micro-scale version of how political empires all over the world corrode democracy: power using complexity and secrecy to loot, then shrugging when ordinary people are left holding the bag.
When retirees and local institutions discover that their “trusted adviser” has instead shoved them into illiquid, high-risk bets while siphoning millions in fees, they don’t just lose money. They lose trust. Trust in financial professionals, in regulators who are supposed to catch this sooner, and in the larger story that markets reward prudence and honesty.
That loss of trust which occurred here has some real ass impacts!
People who’ve been burned stop investing, stop supporting public initiatives, and often retreat into cynicism: everything is rigged, everyone lies, why bother?
A small public library that sees its funds imperiled may cut hours, lay off staff, or cancel programs, hollowing out a civic space that holds communities together.
Frauds like this also distort the allocation of resources.
Tens of millions of dollars that could have financed productive businesses, affordable housing, or genuine environmental solutions instead were parked in a fantasy portfolio of overvalued rocks and a failing company propped up by wishful math.
Capital, in theory, is supposed to flow to socially useful projects; in practice, it often flows toward whoever can write the most persuasive fairy tale in 40 pages of offering documents.
Key Events and Misconduct in the Bluepoint / Greenpoint Case
| Date / Period | Event | What Went Wrong | Human / Social Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 2012 | Michael Hull co-founds Bluepoint after being terminated by another advisory firm. | New advisory platform later used to launch opaque private funds under Hull’s control. | Concentration of power with a manager already pushed out elsewhere, setting the stage for conflicts of interest. |
| 2013 | Creation of Greenpoint Tactical Income Fund and related Greenpoint funds under Bluepoint’s orbit. | Structure for complex, illiquid investments sold as “income” to investors. | Ordinary investors, including small institutions, are funneled into vehicles they can’t easily understand or exit. |
| June 25, 2014 | Entity owned by Nohl buys 14 minerals from the Fund for $93,671. | Undisclosed related-party transaction between Nohl’s own business and GP Rare Earth, the Fund’s mineral-holding subsidiary. | Investor money effectively used to feed the manager’s private business, eroding the Fund as a common pool of savings. |
| September 15, 2014 | Entity co-owned by Hull acquires a piano from the Fund for $58,000. | Another undisclosed self-dealing transaction, shifting Fund assets into insiders’ hands. | Fund capital that should serve investors’ futures is used instead for managers’ private consumption. |
| May 1, 2016 | Third Confidential Investment Letter sent to investors. | Letter allegedly overstates Amiran’s valuation, exaggerates mineral-collection cash flow, and claims “strong growth” despite losses. | Prospective and existing investors are misled into believing their money is backing booming ventures, encouraging more investment into a toxic structure. |
| Through Q3 2016 | Amiran posts weak revenues and heavy losses. | Despite severe financial problems, Amiran is presented as thriving and strategically dominant. | Capital continues flowing into a struggling company while investors remain blind to real risks. |
| September 30, 2016 | Quarterly Valuation Report for Amiran. | Report touts contracts with a major energy company and a foreign government, and positions Amiran as “best available technology,” even though no such contracts or payments existed. | Investors rely on fictitious success stories, which inflate Fund valuations and justify higher fees, worsening future losses. |
| February 10, 2017 – November 30, 2018 | Investor #2 loans the Fund $250,000; loan repeatedly extended; $100,000 interest ultimately paid, including $25,000 routed to a Nohl entity. | High-cost borrowing used to plug liquidity gaps, with part of the interest flowing to Nohl’s entity; terms and conflicts not disclosed to investors or the auditor. | Fund distress is hidden, investor capital is used to service insider-enriching debt, and the true risk of collapse is concealed. |
| March 31, 2017 | Quarterly Valuation Report marks Amiran at enterprise value of ~$46.7M and Fund’s interest at ~$18.1M, creating large unrealized gains. | SEC alleges valuations were misleading, ignored negative facts, and lacked objective basis; used to record millions in unrealized gains. | Artificially high valuations boost fee income for managers while giving investors a false sense of security and prosperity. |
| January 1, 2018 onward | Fund hires H Informatics (owned by Hull and an investor) for “information” services at 0.85% of net assets. | Additional fee stream tied to inflated net asset values, again flowing to insiders. | More of each investor dollar is siphoned off as fees, especially harmful once asset values are discovered to be inflated. |
| February & May 2018 | Further mineral transactions between GP Rare Earth and Nohl’s entities, plus a mineral transferred to Nohl’s entity in exchange for a $4,750 credit! | Ongoing undisclosed related-party transactions keep moving valuable minerals out of the Fund’s hands at insider-friendly terms. | The real backing for investors’ “income fund” is quietly weakened, increasing the eventual loss burden on ordinary investors. |
| February 7, 2020 | SEC complaint filed in federal court (document filed 02/07/20). | Regulators finally intervene after years of alleged misrepresentations, inflated valuations, and self-dealing. | Partial accountability arrives late, after damage to savings, community institutions, and public trust is already done. |
Why It Matters Beyond This Case
It’s tempting to treat the Bluepoint/Greenpoint affair as just “a few bad actors.” But the structure that made this possible is entirely legal and ordinary: opaque private funds, asymmetrical information, compensation tied to asset values that managers themselves help determine, and investors (especially smaller, regional ones) encouraged to “trust the experts.”
The SEC here shows how easy it is to turn that structure into a machine for extraction:
- Mislabel the risk (“income” instead of speculative).
- Inflate asset values that no public market can contradict.
- Use those inflated values to justify high fees and insider deals.
- Delay redemptions and use new money to plug old holes.
The result is a dastardly transfer of wealth upward, wrapped in Excel spreadsheets and audited (or even half-audited) financials, with the law lumbering in years later trying to reconstruct where the money went.
For a healthy society to flourish, finance has to do something more noble than devise creative ways to turn pensioners’ savings into management fees. We need systems where ordinary people can participate in economic life without needing a law degree, a PhD in accounting, and a forensic auditor on retainer just to avoid being looted.
Here is a press release from November 2025 about this same scam on the SEC’s website: https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26422
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