A Fake Business Built on Someone Else’s Name

In 2019, Scalise incorporated a company originally called LAID Beverages, Inc. in New York. He renamed it The3rdBevco in January 2020. From day one, Scalise was the company’s only employee, its CEO, President, CFO, and sole board member. According to the SEC complaint filed on June 17, 2025, in the nearly five years following the company’s formation, The3rdBevco sold little or no product and generated minimal, if any, revenue.

What the company did generate was investor presentations, promotional emails, and a “commercial” for a rum brand that had no product, no deal, and no celebrity attached to it. The SEC alleges that Defendants relied heavily on investor funds for The3rdBevco to remain in business. Without a constant inflow of new money from investors, there was no company at all.

Scalise initially pitched The3rdBevco as a health beverage company — products formulated with ingredients offering benefits “beyond nutritional value and hydration.” He later added alcoholic beverages to the mix. The pivot was never about product development. It was about finding a new hook to keep investors writing checks.

One Man, Total Control, Zero Accountability

The SEC’s complaint makes the power structure crystal clear: Scalise controlled all aspects of The3rdBevco, including its offering of securities, the information disclosed in the solicitation of investors, and how it used investor funds. There was no board of directors to question him, no co-founder to push back, no independent accountant to flag the transfers. Every decision flowed through one man.

That single-point-of-control structure is not an accident in fraud cases — it is the architecture of fraud. When one person writes the investor emails, approves the promotional materials, controls the bank accounts, and signs the company’s public filings, there is no internal check on what he tells investors versus what he actually does with their money.

They Faked a Superstar’s Endorsement. Completely.

In July 2022, The3rdBevco sent an email to investors announcing that the company had engaged in “preliminary discussions” with a celebrity’s management team for a collaboration on a new rum brand. The SEC’s complaint is blunt about what actually happened: no such discussions happened then or ever. The rum brand was never produced or sold to consumers.

What Scalise actually did in July 2022 was approach the celebrity’s brother — a person who was not part of the celebrity’s management team — to propose a consulting arrangement. On August 15, 2022, The3rdBevco and the celebrity’s brother signed a letter of intent. That letter said, in part, that after a formal agreement was signed and the brother received his initial payment, he would attempt to facilitate a meeting between The3rdBevco and the celebrity’s management team. Not deliver a deal. Not negotiate terms. Just try to get a meeting.

Scalise described this as a partnership with Grammy winners and global superstars to his investors. The gap between those two descriptions — “might try to get a meeting with management” versus “partners with Grammy winners” — is the entire architecture of the fraud.

The Unauthorized “Commercial” Campaign

On August 29, 2022, The3rdBevco sent investors a presentation and a “commercial” for the rum brand. The commercial included bottles bearing the celebrity’s nickname and trademark and used a popular song featuring the celebrity’s vocals as background music — all without authorization. Two weeks later, on September 12, 2022, The3rdBevco sent investors an updated version of the commercial. This version still displayed bottles with the celebrity’s nickname and trademark, and used a different popular song with the celebrity’s vocals — again, without authorization.

Both of these emails included a link where investors could purchase shares of company stock. The company was simultaneously running a fraudulent hype campaign and a buy-now sales pitch in the same message.

A Forged Signature and a Fabricated Quote

The fraud escalated dramatically by April 2023. On April 6, 2023, Scalise sent an existing investor and a potential investor a new presentation focused on the rum brand. According to the SEC’s complaint, this April 2023 Presentation contained an unauthorized quote attributed to the celebrity, along with a fake signature of the celebrity’s name, and images of the celebrity. The presentation described the nonexistent rum brand as though it was actually in development, used the name of one of the celebrity’s popular songs as part of the messaging with an image of the celebrity as the background, and referenced the celebrity’s non-profit organization.

After receiving this presentation, the existing investor purchased $100,000 (enough to cover four years of in-state tuition at an average public university) worth of shares in The3rdBevco. A fabricated signature on a fraudulent presentation directly caused a six-figure investment decision.

They Kept Going After Getting Caught

On October 10, 2022, the celebrity’s brother emailed Scalise directly to complain that The3rdBevco had used the celebrity’s image without authorization and had publicized a non-existent collaboration in a press release. Scalise replied the same day that he understood and agreed nothing would be said about the potential collaboration unless a deal was firmly in place. Two weeks later, on October 28, 2022, the celebrity’s image was still on The3rdBevco’s website next to a rum bottle bearing the celebrity’s nickname and trademark.

Scalise was verbally caught, promised to stop, kept going, was caught again by phone, and confirmed by text that he had finally removed the image. Then in March 2023 — months after all of this — Scalise sent an advisory committee member a template email, instructing them to solicit new investors using language stating that the celebrity’s brother was part of The3rdBevco’s team. The template described the celebrity as a “mega star.” At this point, The3rdBevco had already voided the formal agreement with the celebrity’s brother and he had never worked a single day as a consultant.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

Every investor who wrote a check to The3rdBevco made a decision based on a lie. They saw a polished presentation featuring a globally recognized celebrity’s face, heard music they recognized, and read what appeared to be the celebrity’s own words of endorsement. The SEC confirms that the celebrity had zero knowledge, zero contact, and zero authorization of any of this material. The investors who trusted that presentation were not reckless. They were deceived by a professional-looking fraud designed to exploit the social credibility of someone famous.

One investor trusted The3rdBevco’s April 2023 presentation enough to immediately purchase $100,000 (enough to pay a year’s salary for two full-time minimum wage workers) in company shares. That decision was made after reading a fabricated quote attributed to a celebrity who had never spoken a word to Scalise, and seeing what appeared to be a genuine handwritten signature that was entirely fake. There is a specific, named human being who is $100,000 poorer today because Scalise wrote fake words in someone else’s name and put a forged signature underneath them. That person is not a statistic.

The investors who bought during the periods of illegal securities sales — contributing more than $564,000 (enough to cover the annual healthcare costs of roughly 188 uninsured Americans) in the first barred period alone — bought shares in a company that had no legal right to sell them at all during that time. The3rdBevco had failed to file required annual and semi-annual reports and, as a result, lost its exemption from securities registration requirements. The company kept selling anyway. Those investors have no ordinary legal recourse through the registration system because the system’s protections were stripped away by the company’s own noncompliance. The safety net was cut by the very people who should have been maintaining it.

There is also a quiet secondary betrayal embedded in this case: Scalise diverted investor funds directly to his own mortgage, his own car payments, his children’s tuition, and his landscaping bills. The people who handed over their savings to fund what they believed was a beverage startup were, in practice, funding one man’s suburban household expenses. He disclosed certain compensation to investors through public filings — and then took far more on top of that, in cash withdrawals and direct transfers, without telling anyone. The fraud was not the product of recklessness or poor judgment. The SEC alleges he acted knowingly, and the paper trail of direct bank transfers and voided agreements supports that characterization completely.

Legal Receipts: The Damning Paper Trail

Direct quotes and factual statements from the SEC complaint, filed June 17, 2025.

“Scalise misappropriated and misused more than $856,000 of investor funds, including for personal expenses, such as tuition, mortgage payments, and landscaping.” SEC Complaint, Paragraph 3 — Peter Scalise III personally enriched himself with investor money

“The April 2023 Presentation contained an unauthorized quote attributed to Individual 1, along with a fake signature of Individual 1’s name, and images of Individual 1.” SEC Complaint, Paragraph 60 — Scalise fabricated a celebrity’s signature to obtain investor funds

“Defendants never spoke with Individual 1 or anyone on Individual 1’s management team about collaborating on the purported Rum Brand. Defendants never communicated with Individual 1 or anyone on Individual 1’s management team at all.” SEC Complaint, Paragraph 66 — The entire celebrity partnership narrative was fabricated from start to finish

“Contrary to the representations in the August 2022 Presentation, The3rdBevco did not partner with Grammy winners or global superstars. Moreover, the references to and images of Individual 1 in the August 2022 Presentation and the unauthorized use of Individual 1’s vocals and trademark in the commercials falsely suggested that Individual 1 was collaborating with The3rdBevco and gave the misimpression that the Rum Brand was an actual product. Neither was true.” SEC Complaint, Paragraphs 41–42 — The SEC’s own summary of the celebrity deception

“Even after Scalise declined to execute and voided the formal agreement with Individual 1’s brother, Scalise and The3rdBevco represented by e-mail to others, including an investment firm and a broker-dealer, that Individual 1’s brother was part of The3rdBevco’s team. Defendants knew, or were reckless in not knowing, that these representations were false.” SEC Complaint, Paragraph 56 — Scalise kept lying to professional investors even after voiding the only real agreement he had

“In the nearly five years following its formation, The3rdBevco sold little or no product and generated minimal, if any, revenue. Defendants relied heavily on investor funds for The3rdBevco to remain in business.” SEC Complaint, Paragraphs 15–16 — The company’s entire existence depended on continuous investor deception

Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt When One Guy Runs a Scam

Economic Inequality: Small Investors Were the Fuel

Regulation A — the securities exemption The3rdBevco exploited — was designed specifically to give small companies a lower-cost pathway to raise money from ordinary, non-wealthy investors. The SEC qualified The3rdBevco’s Reg A offering in February 2022, authorizing the company to attempt to raise up to $50 million (more than the average American worker earns in 1,000 years of full-time work). That exemption exists because policymakers wanted everyday people to have access to early-stage investment opportunities. Scalise turned that democratic access tool into a mechanism for extracting money from people who lacked the resources to conduct the kind of due diligence that institutional investors routinely perform.

The company sold shares through online portals, social media, and mass email campaigns between 2022 and 2024. The solicitation was deliberately structured to reach as wide an audience as possible at low cost. The3rdBevco’s website, social accounts, and investor emails were all pointed at people who saw a celebrity name, recognized it, and clicked a link to buy stock. The friction between “see famous name” and “purchase shares” was engineered to be as low as possible. That is a design choice, and it targeted people who would trust a celebrity association more than they would scrutinize a balance sheet.

The $617,000 (enough to fund a full year of operations for a small community health clinic) raised during the two periods of illegal securities sales represents a particularly severe harm. During those periods, The3rdBevco had lost its regulatory exemption because it failed to file required financial reports. Those reports exist precisely to give investors the information they need to make informed decisions. The company kept selling anyway, directly depriving investors of the legal protections they were entitled to. The investors who bought during those windows received shares in a company that had no legal right to issue them. Every dollar of that $617,000 represents a purchase made without the informational safeguards that securities law requires.

You can read a brief press release about this story by clicking on this SEC link: https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26328

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