Andy Macritchie

Andy MacRitchie joined Aequitas Capital Management in 2007 and rose to become the firm's Executive Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer. In that role he was responsible for developing and implementing the company's risk-management and compliance processes and oversaw its accounting, legal, and auditing functions. He also participated directly in fundraising, established Aequitas's New York office, and directed the company's "Lux Fund," a Luxembourg-based vehicle used to solicit international investors.

Aequitas, headquartered in Lake Oswego, Oregon, marketed itself as a diversified specialty-finance firm and raised money from investors through a range of promissory notes and private funds. A significant portion of the business involved consumer receivables — most notoriously, financing private student loans for students of Corinthian Colleges. Between roughly 2011 and 2014, through an affiliate (Campus Student Funding LLC), Aequitas helped fund more than $500 million in private student loans to Corinthian students, buying the debt at a discount under an arrangement in which Corinthian agreed to repurchase loans that went more than 90 days delinquent. When Corinthian collapsed and filed for bankruptcy in 2015, it could no longer honor those repurchase obligations, and Aequitas was left holding defaulted loans and mounting losses.

That exposure precipitated Aequitas's own collapse in early 2016, when the SEC filed a civil complaint and the firm was placed into receivership. Federal prosecutors later charged that, from June 2014 through February 2016, MacRitchie and other senior executives continued soliciting investors while misrepresenting how investor money was being used, the financial health of the company, and the risks of its strategies — concealing near-constant liquidity crises and the use of new investor funds to repay earlier investors and cover operating expenses (a Ponzi-like pattern). Nearly $300 million was raised from investors during that period.

On May 15, 2023, after a six-week trial in Portland, a federal jury convicted MacRitchie, former CEO Robert J. Jesenik, and former EVP Brian K. Rice of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud plus 28 counts of wire fraud. In September 2023, MacRitchie (then 59) was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $689,662. Jesenik received 14 years; Rice received 37 months.

• This individual is not an active seed/venture investor. The "Seed Round / Seed investor" label in the source data is unsupported by any evidence and contradicts the firm's actual business.
• Aequitas's real strategy was specialty finance / private credit: acquiring and financing pools of consumer and other receivables (notably discounted Corinthian private student loans and healthcare receivables) and packaging exposure into promissory notes and private funds sold to investors.
• The firm targeted yield-seeking investors — retail investors via financial advisors and TAMPS (turnkey asset-management platforms), plus international investors through the Luxembourg "Lux Fund" — rather than making equity investments in startups.
• Government findings established that the "thesis" ultimately marketed to investors was fraudulent: it overstated the company's health and understated risk while the firm faced chronic liquidity shortfalls.