The Actors

Who Built the Box: Burgerim’s Corporate Structure

This was a layered operation with two corporate shells, one CEO, and a common enterprise that the federal complaint treats as a single unified scheme.

• Burgerim Group USA, Inc. (BIMGUSA) is a California corporation based in Calabasas, California. It has sold Burgerim franchises across the United States since at least 2016.
• Burgerim Group, Inc. (BIMG) is a Delaware corporation, also based in Calabasas, incorporated in June 2019. Since August 2019, BIMG has communicated with franchisees, enforced franchise agreements, received supplier rebate payments, and paid company employees, all functions previously handled by BIMGUSA.
• Oren Loni was CEO of both corporate entities at all relevant times. He personally signed bank accounts, negotiated franchisee contracts, communicated with prospective and existing buyers, and, per the complaint, directly formulated and directed the deceptive practices described in each count.
• The two companies shared the same office address, the same management, employees, revenues, and comingled funds. The federal complaint treats them as a single common enterprise, making each entity jointly liable for the other’s conduct.

The Scheme

How the “Business in a Box” Trap Was Engineered

Burgerim didn’t stumble into bad practices. The complaint documents a deliberate, multi-layered system of enticement, suppression, and abandonment.

• Burgerim pitched the opportunity as a “business in a box” that required zero prior restaurant experience. Their marketing leaned hard on the idea that their team would do the heavy lifting: finding a location, arranging financing, hiring contractors, handling licensing.
• The Burgerim “Brand Book,” provided to every prospective buyer, promised that their team would walk franchisees “through the entire process of becoming a restaurateur,” including locking in a prime location and acquiring architects and contractors.
• Their website promised to “help you customize your location, hire a small team, and generate wealth,” and claimed Burgerim’s global team had “conducted extensive research” and developed “training, branding and operations protocols designed to empower franchise owners.”
• The franchise fee for a single location ran between $50,000 and $70,000. That fee covered only the right to use the brand name. It did not cover the cost of finding space, building out a restaurant, buying equipment, or stocking supplies. Burgerim’s own estimates put total startup costs above $600,000.
• Burgerim incentivized bulk purchasing, offering discounts to franchisees who signed on for multiple locations. Veterans were offered $10,000–$15,000 discounts, then encouraged to buy multiple sites with additional veteran-specific pricing.
• Many buyers had never run a restaurant before. Many took out SBA-backed or commercial bank loans to cover the franchise fee alone, meaning they entered the arrangement carrying debt before a single brick was laid.

Chronology

From Launch to Federal Lawsuit: A Timeline of Misconduct

The complaint documents a six-year arc from Burgerim’s U.S. launch to a federal complaint. Every year between 2016 and 2022 added another layer of documented harm.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What $70,000 and a Broken Promise Actually Cost People

There is a category of damage that doesn’t show up in the federal complaint’s count of civil penalties. It shows up in what people had to go through after signing a Burgerim franchise agreement and watching everything collapse.

Think about what it takes for someone with no restaurant experience to decide they’re going to open a burger franchise. They’ve done the math. They’ve read the Brand Book promising that Burgerim’s team walks you through every step. They’ve talked to a representative who told them that existing stores were hitting $50,000 a month in revenue within two weeks. They’ve been told that if things go wrong and they can’t get financing or find a space, they’ll get their money back. They believe this because Burgerim said it out loud, and sometimes put it in writing. They believe it because one of the defendants, Oren Loni himself, signed his name to letters promising refunds.

Many of these people were veterans. The military teaches you to trust your chain of command, to take someone at their word when they give it formally. Burgerim hunted for that trust specifically. The discounts weren’t charity. They were conversion tools designed to bring veterans in the door, then push them toward buying multiple locations. Every additional location was another $40,000–$70,000 in fees, and another round of SBA loan debt sitting on a veteran’s credit file.

Then the process stalled. The build-out cost more than projected. The financing fell through. The franchisee went back to Burgerim and asked for the refund they’d been promised. And then, the complaint documents, nothing happened. They followed up. Nothing. They followed up again. Months passed. In documented cases, more than a year passed. And then a Burgerim representative came back with a new demand: sign a different document, one that included a non-disparagement clause, or no money would be returned. Sign away your right to speak about what happened to you, or lose every dollar you invested.

That is a specific kind of cruelty. The person who has already been taken advantage of is told that they can only recover their losses by agreeing to stay silent about the taking. Burgerim wasn’t just keeping the money. It was buying silence with money it had already stolen. Meanwhile the company kept the website up. It kept advertising the franchise opportunity. It kept marketing the “business in a box” pitch to the next round of people who had the will to succeed and wanted someone to pave the way.

The federal complaint describes franchisees left “crushed by substantial debt or ruined credit” after the time and effort they’d spent trying to make their entrepreneurial aspirations real. That phrase, “entrepreneurial aspirations,” is the thing worth sitting with. These were people who wanted to build something. Who wanted to be their own bosses, employ people in their communities, and create a future for themselves and their families. Burgerim converted that ambition into a revenue stream and then disappeared.

Legal Receipts

What the Federal Complaint Says, Word for Word

These are direct quotes from Case 2:22-CV-825. No paraphrase. No editorializing. Read what the United States government put in writing about Burgerim.

“Defendants lure would-be entrepreneurs into paying tens of thousands of dollars to open a burger franchise under the trade name ‘Burgerim.’ These franchises require a large upfront investment. Purchasers included veterans and people with different backgrounds and business experiences. Many purchasers relied on obtaining loans for tens of thousands of dollars to fund their franchise. Defendants, however, glossed over the risks of these hefty investments, touting the franchise as a ‘business in a box,’ and purporting to offer refunds in the event franchisees could not open the restaurant.”
— Complaint, Paragraph 2

• The government’s use of “lure” is deliberate legal language indicating calculated targeting, not passive miscommunication. The DOJ is saying this was a trap, built to appeal to people without existing capital or business experience.
• The specific mention of veterans confirms Burgerim’s discount system was not goodwill. It was a targeting strategy aimed at a population known for trust in institutional promises.
• The phrase “purporting to offer refunds” signals that the refund promise was, in the government’s view, fraudulent from the start: made without intention to honor it.

“Defendants sold more than 1,500 Burgerim franchises, but the overwhelming majority of Burgerim franchisees never got their businesses off the ground. Hundreds sought to cancel their franchise agreements. In many cases, Defendants did not honor their promises to provide refunds, and in this scheme, have bilked aspiring business owners out of millions of dollars.”
— Complaint, Paragraph 4

• “Overwhelming majority never got their businesses off the ground” means the failure rate wasn’t the exception. The franchises that opened were the anomaly. The standard outcome was financial loss without a restaurant.
• The government uses the word “scheme.” This is not an accident or a business difficulty. The complaint frames the entire operation as a coordinated fraud.
• “Bilked aspiring business owners out of millions of dollars” is the federal government plainly describing theft, framed within a legal structure to pursue civil penalties and consumer redress.

“Some franchisees who were unable to secure financing, and had a signed letter from Oren Loni promising that Burgerim would refund their franchise fee under such circumstances, spent more than a year trying to get their money back to no avail. Ultimately, a Burgerim representative told them that in order to get their money back, they would have to sign a new document, which included a non-disparagement clause and other obligations.”
— Complaint, Paragraph 34

• Oren Loni signed letters personally. This detail erases any argument that refund promises were made by low-level sales staff without authority. The CEO was the one making the promise and the CEO’s company was the one refusing to honor it.
• “More than a year trying to get their money back to no avail” documents deliberate delay as a tactic. This was not administrative slowness. It was wearing people down until they gave up or accepted worse terms.
• Demanding a non-disparagement clause as the price of a refund is legally significant. It means Burgerim was using money it owed to buy silence, which compounds the original deception with a secondary coercive act.

“Defendants failed to include in Item 19 of the FDDs, the verbal financial performance representations they provided to prospective franchisees. In fact, Defendants not only failed to include this required information, they contradicted their verbal representations by stating in the FDDs that no such representations had been made.”
— Complaint, Paragraph 39

• This is double deception in a single documented act. First, Burgerim made financial performance claims verbally (stores hitting $50,000/month in two weeks). Then it filed official documents stating it had made no such claims. It lied to the buyers, then lied in the paperwork about having lied.
• The Franchise Rule exists precisely to catch this: verbal promises disappear; written disclosures create a paper trail. Burgerim exploited that gap deliberately.
• The DOJ charges this under Count III as a per-violation offense carrying up to $46,517 in civil penalties per instance, meaning each time a franchisee received contradicted disclosures is a separate chargeable act.

“Despite Defendants’ representations that under certain conditions they would refund the franchisees’ franchise fees, in numerous instances, Item 5 of Defendants’ FDDs did not identify all such conditions. In fact, not only did Defendants fail to include all such conditions, but in certain instances, the FDDs contradicted Defendants’ own representations by stating the franchise fee was non-refundable.”
— Complaint, Paragraph 40

• Verbally: “We’ll give you your money back if you can’t secure financing.” In writing: “The fee is non-refundable.” These two statements cannot coexist honestly. One was used to close the sale. The other was used to avoid repayment.
• This pattern across both financial performance claims and refund conditions confirms a systemic strategy: say what sells in person, document something contradictory in writing, then use the written document to deny accountability later.

What You Were Told vs. Reality

The Paper Trail That Was Built to Contradict Itself

The federal complaint documents a consistent pattern: Burgerim’s verbal pitch and written disclosures told two different stories to the same people.

Societal Impact Mapping

Who Got Hurt and How Far the Damage Spreads

Public Health and Psychological Harm

The psychological toll of predatory franchise schemes tracks closely with documented patterns of financial trauma. The complaint’s own language points toward injuries that go well beyond the balance sheet.

• The federal complaint explicitly states franchisees were left “crushed by substantial debt or ruined credit,” a financial condition with documented connections to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression, conditions disproportionately affecting people who invested their savings or retirement funds in the scheme.
• Veterans, who were specifically targeted, represent a population already at elevated risk for mental health challenges. Being defrauded of $40,000–$70,000 or more, often using SBA-backed loans, while pursuing the post-service financial independence the franchise pitch directly sold them on, compounds pre-existing vulnerabilities in an already high-risk demographic.
• Burgerim’s use of non-disparagement clauses as conditions for refunds forced victims into silence, cutting off the social support and shared knowledge that could have reduced harm. People who couldn’t speak publicly about what happened to them couldn’t warn others or organize for collective recovery.
• The complaint notes that many franchisees had “no prior experience running a restaurant before signing up.” People with less business experience are systematically less equipped to navigate the legal and financial processes required to fight back, extending the duration of harm for those least able to absorb it.

Economic Inequality

The Burgerim scheme extracted wealth from people trying to build it, with structural features that targeted those with the least resilience to absorb losses.

• Franchise fees of $50,000–$70,000 represent a life-altering sum for most working- and middle-class buyers. Many relied on SBA-backed loans, meaning they left the failed franchise not just with no business, but with federal loan debt and damaged credit scores that will affect their economic options for years.
• Burgerim’s multi-location incentive structure, particularly for veterans, encouraged buyers to take on more exposure than a single fee. A veteran talked into buying two locations at a “discounted” $40,000 each still paid $80,000 before a shovel hit the ground, plus the debt service on whatever loans made that possible.
• The demographic targeting of military veterans, while framed as a benefit, was predatory in design. Veterans often have access to SBA veteran-specific loan programs, making them a population with reliable access to large loan amounts, which is useful to a franchise operation collecting fees regardless of whether stores open.
• The majority of the 1,500+ franchises never opened, meaning the tens of millions of dollars Burgerim collected generated almost nothing in local economic activity. No jobs were created in the communities where franchisees planned to open. No suppliers were paid. No local wages were earned. The money moved up to Calabasas and stopped.
• Four state regulatory bodies (Maryland, Washington, Indiana, and California) issued orders against Burgerim before the federal complaint was filed. Regulatory action at the state level, which typically requires significant documented harm, went active across the country yet the company continued to advertise. People who signed on after the state orders were issued had no easy way to know the orders existed.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What the Numbers Mean in Human Terms

What Now?

Who to Pressure, What to File, and How to Fight Back

The DOJ filed suit in February 2022. The case sought permanent injunction, monetary civil penalties, and consumer redress. Here is who is accountable and where to apply pressure.

The Named Defendants

• Oren Loni, individually and as CEO of both Burgerim Group USA, Inc. and Burgerim Group, Inc. He signed the refund letters. He ran both companies. He is named personally in the complaint.
• Burgerim Group USA, Inc., California corporation, 23945 Calabasas Road, Calabasas, California 91302.
• Burgerim Group, Inc., Delaware corporation, same address as above.

Regulatory Watchlist

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The agency that referred this case to the DOJ and that enforces the Franchise Rule under 16 C.F.R. Part 436. File a complaint at ftc.gov/complaint if you or someone you know was sold a Burgerim franchise.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Consumer Protection Branch: The federal body that actually filed suit. Case No. 2:22-CV-825, U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Court records are public.
• Small Business Administration (SBA): Many victims used SBA-backed loans. The SBA has oversight over lenders and loan programs that may have been used to fund a fraudulent investment. Contact your regional SBA office if your loan was used for a Burgerim franchise that never opened.
• State Attorneys General: Maryland, Washington, and Indiana each issued orders against BIMGUSA. California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation issued a cease-and-desist. If you are in any of these states, your state AG’s office has an open record on this company.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Relevant if commercial bank lenders were involved in originating loans for Burgerim franchise purchases. File at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Resistance

• If you signed a non-disparagement clause as a condition of a Burgerim refund, consult a consumer protection attorney. NDAs signed under duress or as part of a fraudulent scheme have been successfully voided in court. Many consumer protection attorneys work on contingency for franchise fraud cases.
• Connect with other former Burgerim franchisees. Class consolidation in consumer fraud cases increases legal leverage and reduces individual litigation costs. Veterans’ service organizations often have legal aid resources specifically for fraud cases targeting veterans.
• If you are a veteran who was targeted by Burgerim’s military discount program, contact your regional VA office. Veteran-specific consumer fraud resources exist at the state and federal level, including assistance from the VA’s Office of General Counsel.
• Share this case openly. The non-disparagement tactic only works if it succeeds in keeping people silent. The federal complaint is a public document. The facts in it are publicly verified. Spreading awareness of Case 2:22-CV-825 is a direct form of resistance to the silence Burgerim bought.
• Demand franchise rule reform. The Franchise Rule was supposed to prevent exactly this. Contact your congressional representative and demand stronger enforcement funding for FTC franchise oversight and mandatory criminal referrals when franchise fraud is confirmed at scale.