In this week’s episode of The Dark Side of Finance, Darryl Lyons tackles a fresh and deeply personal case, shedding light on a financial scandal that’s still unfolding. This episode dives into the case of David Anthony Wright, a former pastor-turned-financial advisor, who defrauded clients under the guise of faith. Known as “The Investment Preacher,” Wright orchestrated a $2 million fraud by selling fraudulent promissory notes to clients while misleading them with promises of safety, religious rhetoric, and misused biblical references. The twist? Wright himself may have been conned, leading to an even more convoluted outcome.
Key show highlights include:
- The shocking case of David Anthony Wright, “The Investment Preacher,” and his $2 million fraud.
- How Wright misused scripture and faith to gain trust and mislead his clients.
- A warning about the dangers of wolves in sheep’s clothing within the financial services industry.
- The importance of scrutinizing financial advisors who incorporate faith into their practices and the role of trust in the capitalist system.
Join Darryl as he unpacks this ongoing story of deception, faith, and financial misconduct, and offers insights on how to protect yourself from similar schemes. If you find this episode valuable, share it with others. Keep your head on a swivel as we navigate the dark side of finance together.
Transcript:
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group, and you’re listening to The Dark Side of Finance. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinanciaGroup.com for more information.
So, this one is a little personal and it may be different than the previous ones, because this one is actually still an open wound.
There has not been resolve in this case. It’s very fresh. The headline hit my feed this month. So, I don’t have the end of this story. It’s one that you may end up following yourself. But I thought it was worth addressing because it has happened. This specific issue has happened multiple times. Now, for those that don’t know me.
I have deeply held convictions in my Christian faith. And when I’ve been in the financial business since 1999, and it wasn’t until about 4 or 5 years ago that I started to be more overt about our faith and integrating our faith from a public visibility viewpoint for many years, for the majority of my career, I refused to outwardly share my faith to the community.
Why? Because I always thought that the plumber that pushed Jesus or put a fish on their car, but then took advantage of a little old lady, was the most disgusting thing that I’ve ever seen in my life. So, I refused to go down that path. But I reflected deeply on an issue that was dangling over my head. And it was the day that a client came in.
It was a new client, and they had lost half of their retirement savings because someone within the church had defrauded them. And I had to think deeply about this. What we then decided to do was take the next step of being more overt for the benefit of those within the Christian community to have what. And I’m using air quotes because safe is not, but a safe place to have, to receive financial advice away from people that were wolves in sheep’s clothing within the church community.
It was not something I was comfortable with at all. And I still have reservations about it. I feel like I say reservations, but here’s the thing if you read the Ten Commandments and it says you will not use the Lord’s name in vain. I don’t know which one that is. I’m sorry, but sometimes you think about that as a cuss word that might be on a, you know, on a comedy.
But think of it this way. It’s really using the Lord’s name for your own selfish ambition. I feel like every day I’ve got to check myself here, because that’s the last thing I want to do. But it’s happening within the church. Way too much. Way too much. And this was an example. And it and it really, really hurts.
And by the way, I know a lot of people that are financial people, and they are a part of what’s called a Kingdom advisor community. And they’re good, solid people. But there’s some people within that ecosystem that are frauds and wolves in sheep’s clothing. And that’s what happened with this guy named David Anthony, right, in Cookeville, Tennessee. He worked for a group called the Retirement Specialty Group.
This was his group, actually. He had a few other people, and I have actually some people I’ve some friends that knew him. So, some of this information is, I would not say insider, but, the SEC knows everything I’m going to say because this information was provided to the SEC, and many of it was published on the SEC website, but he defrauded investors from June of 2021 to July of 2023.
Now, based on the previous shows that we’ve done, his was not near as extreme, but it still hurts. It’s $2 million of fraudulent promissory notes to at least five clients, and then some people on the outside. Now promissory notes are just like they sound. You give me the money. Let’s say a million dollars, I will pay you back.
This is kind of how they work. I don’t know his specific one. I will pay back in five years, and I will give you 20% interest each and every year. I promise to pay you back a note and a bond and a loan. Those are used often interchangeably. So if you see note, it’s often bond or loan promissory.
I promise to pay you back. While the question any reasonable investor would say is what happens if you can’t pay back? And what he had proposed is that these promissory notes will be backed by real estate. So, if I do default, you’ll be able to take the real estate so that would suggest that it’s more secure. And of course, they ask what are you going to use the money for?
Now, I’m not exactly 100% certain what he told people. He was going to use the money for, but I do know that he used some of the money to buy a home. I guess it’s an expensive home. I don’t know. Again, the details, but he did use some of the clients money to buy a home and he was running a, I would say, a rather successful radio show that was on Sirius FM.
And as I understand it, he wanted to be in that radio business. So, his attempt was to buy a radio business in Dallas, Texas. As I understand it, again, this is all unfolding. He not only took advantage of the clients’ money, but I believe that a con artist conned him as well. So, the con got conned and this is all still unfolding.
And frankly, it doesn’t matter necessarily what he did with the money. He misappropriated people’s money. I mean, whether he bought a car or he bought a house or he bought who he invested in a, in a bookstore, doesn’t matter necessarily what this con artist David Anthony Wright goes by Anthony Wright.
What he did with the money, the reality is, is that he misrepresented to his clients. He was known. And get this, this is where it kills me. He was known as the investment preacher. And it’s not there anymore because I did a Google search, but it’s, investmentpreacher.com. That was his deal.
And he was a former pastor. He actually quoted, if he there’s a video still lingering out there and you can see he actually quoted Proverbs [27:23], and you would think at first glance that it was, he, he was using it appropriately. But then if you look up the scripture and I’ll let you do this on your own, it was it was.
Hey, I’m overusing this word, but he misrepresented the word of God. He took that scripture to support his rhetoric. And again, I guess suppose if you’re an investor and you see these preachers, the financial guys, and by the way, I’m like, in that world, if you see a scripture that’s being quoted and you see it kind of being twisted, I think there’s some there’s reason to be worried.
So, for those that are using Christian financial advisors, check the scripture. I know this is just a little micro thing, but we’re trying to pick up clues. The SEC has noticed that this has been a trend and they put on an investor alert to be careful of those that are using religion to promote financial advice. So, this is a problem.
And so, if you see you all of us are like, oh, a scripture, he’s using a scripture. But in this case you’ll see and you can again YouTube this yourself. You’ll see him misuse this scripture. Proverbs [27:23] in his, in his videos, in his podcast, I went to look them up. They’re not there anymore. So, I only saw a little bit of his work.
I say work with air quotes, but he promoted tactical asset management, which is, green light buy, red light sell. He told the prospective investors that they had stop loss protection and he belittled other financial advisors. Said most financial advisors won’t do this for you, but we do. And he said 94% of financial advisors tell you just to hang on and and just suck it up and ride it back.
And his message is we do not do that. We have stop losses that will get you out. And that sounds great, but it doesn’t work and there’s plenty of evidence to support it. And if it does work there, what I would suggest to you is there has to be an extremely credible institution that has all the systems and processes and tracker could be able to do that.
Well, not a guy that’s really by himself trying to buy and sell. So that was his strategy. And then his pitch was that he would screen out companies and, and I can understand this is, something that we really all want to screen out companies. And he would use the words clean and dirty. He would screen in companies that were clean and screen out companies that were dirty.
Now, this is where it’s a little bit of a fine line because I really get concerned when somebody who is a faith filled and even if they’re sincere, they beat you over the head with the Bible until you should not be investing in these companies. It’s against the Bible. I just feel like that’s a misrepresentation. And I could sense that here when you when you listen to him, he was nearly beating you over the head with a Bible saying, you should not own this.
You should. You’re not like he said, you’re going to hell. But it felt like on the brink of that. So I was from an investor, from somebody who has experience in this industry. I saw a couple red flags just on a quick video misuse of the scripture. This tactical approach to investing, which he suggests that he can do things better than most advisors out there, which I find to be most of the time when they do the tactical stuff.
Again, if it’s not, I think there may be some unique perspectives with large institutions, but most of the time it’s not going to work. And then again, this, this, this Bible beating thing, there’s just some little things that were there, just like little micro expressions that really bothered me. What he did is he had this business and he then got busted for these promissory notes.
And so I guess sometime in the middle of getting busted, he sold his business. And financial advisory practices are valuable. So he sold his financial advisory business to another firm. And the other firm not only bought that business but hired his son. And, this poor firm had no clue what they got into. So now on all the SEC reports, this new firm’s name is and I won’t say because they didn’t do anything wrong.
They’re on a lot of these reports. They ended up firing the son. But they’re now trying to PR their way through this thing because he didn’t tell him. He just took the check and ran. He has been this preacher with air quotes. Anthony, right, has been barred as an officer or director. He can’t sell securities anymore.
And, the SEC. Excuse me. The. I’m reading from the SEC report here. The SEC said that Wright misappropriated most of the no proceeds for his own personal benefit, and then lied to the investors about the repayment status of the notes. He also failed to disclose business and financial ties with the issuers of the notes, which created some conflict of interest.
So maybe he had some type of ownership or kickback or something. I don’t really know the degree of that. But that firm, I feel bad for that advisory firm. They got taken advantage of too, they put on their website and I again, I don’t want to say the name, but these wealth advisors are not affiliated with Retirement Specialty Group, nor its owner, Donald.
I’m sorry, David Anthony. Right. Creamer Wealth Advisors is not a party to the complaint and had no association with or knowledge of any matters that are the subject of this complaint. So this person who is out there beating people over the head with the Bible was a liar. And he had a reputation of lying in the office.
And he really. This is the very essence, like this absolutely kills me. And again, I’ll follow this case a little bit more. But this one, this is the stuff that I really want to protect. Those people that share my faith, that trust. There’s a degree of trust that really makes, by the way, this degree of trust really makes our whole ecosystem.
It makes capitalism work. Without trust, capitalism doesn’t work. And so the very fabric of our economy relies on trust. And for somebody to do this in the name of Jesus, it just kills me in so many different ways. And so I want to share this story with you just briefly. We’ll see how it unfolds as we go forward.
It’s not a big case. Again, it’s 2 million, but there are families there. It could be just a handful of families that their life is totally different now, totally different. And I just want you two guys just to continue to be on alert. Please ask PAX tough questions, and please double check us and check our hearts. We want you to verify us as well.
And then if you see these people out there and your family is using them and they’re using them because of their faith, then just be on high alert. That’s what the SEC has done right now, is they’re on high alert. And I want you to as well keep your head on a swivel, because there are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
And keep your head on a swivel for the benefit of you and your family and your community. Thank you for listening. Have a great day.
References:
Faith-based advisor and minister defrauds clients in Tennessee, SEC charges – Investment News
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