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Sec charges russell todd burkhalter and his atlanta-based firm with $300 million ponzi scheme and obtains emergency relief.

For Immediate Release

Washington D.C., Aug. 14, 2024 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it obtained a preliminary injunction, asset freeze, and other emergency relief against Atlanta-based Drive Planning LLC and its founder and CEO, Russell Todd Burkhalter, to halt a $300 million real estate Ponzi scheme impacting more than 2,000 investors. Additionally, a receiver was appointed over Drive Planning. The SEC alleges the defendants misappropriated millions of dollars of investor funds to fund Burkhalter’s lavish lifestyle and to make Ponzi-like payments.

“Drive Planning and Burkhalter gained the trust of everyday people and encouraged them to invest in this scheme by promising exorbitant returns, but as our complaint alleges, the defendants’ business was nothing more than a classic Ponzi scheme, using new investor money to pay returns to existing investors, with Burkhalter stealing millions to fund a lavish lifestyle,” said Nekia Hackworth Jones, Director of the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office. “Investors should be vigilant when they encounter aggressive sellers who make over-the-top sales pitches and promise high rates of guaranteed returns.”

The SEC’s complaint alleges that, from 2020 through at least June 2024, Drive Planning and Burkhalter raised more than $300 million for purported real estate investments, telling investors their money would be used to fund land development projects. The defendants promised 10% interest every 3 months and encouraged investors to tap their savings, retirement accounts, and even open lines of credit to invest. In reality, the defendants did not have a business capable of generating the promised returns, and they instead used investor funds to make Ponzi-like payments, according to the complaint. The complaint further alleges that Burkhalter stole investor funds to fund his luxurious lifestyle, including to buy a $3.1 million yacht and spending $4.6 million on chartering private jets and luxury car services and $2 million on a luxury condo. 

The SEC’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, charges Drive Planning and Burkhalter with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. In addition to the emergency relief granted by the Court, which the defendants did not oppose, the SEC seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against the defendants, and an officer-and-director bar against Burkhalter. The complaint also names Jacqueline Burkhalter, Burkhalter’s spouse, and several related entities as relief defendants and seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from them.  

The SEC’s ongoing investigation is being conducted by Austin Stephenson and Cody Turley, under the supervision of Peter Diskin and Justin Jeffries, of the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office. The SEC’s litigation will be led by Pat Huddleston and H.B. Roback, under the supervision of M. Graham Loomis.

Last Reviewed or Updated: Aug. 14, 2024

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Rescue 95 miles from shore in violent seas with boat sinking tested Coast Guard’s limits

An MH-65 Dolphin flies on a night mission off the coast of Haiti on Nov. 23, 2021. A similar Dolphin helicopter flew off the coast of Oregon in July 2024 on a rescue mission that “was kind of in a different league,” according to a Coast Guard official. (John Hightower/U.S. Coast Guard)

(Tribune News Service) — The Coast Guard rescue swimmer gripped the starboard side of the sinking sailboat in the dark as the waves beat against him. He called out to the man standing on the boat as a helicopter hovered overhead.

“You’re going to jump,” Miles LeComer shouted over the sound of the wind and rotor wash and waves. “And I’m going to grab you.”

David Haight had a briefcase and a knapsack ready with some of the few valuable possessions he took with him on what was supposed to be a journey from Newport to Santa Barbara. LeComer, barely able to hold onto the sailboat as it rolled up and down on the waves more than 90 miles offshore, told Haight he could only take what was in his pockets. He gave him one minute to prepare.

Haight, his sailboat disappearing beneath him, didn’t need the minute. He jumped, crashing into the frigid Pacific Ocean, engulfed, immediately knocked about by 15-foot-tall waves. He went under.

A hand grabbed him and held on.

‘There wasn’t anything to feel’

Sitting in an Elmer’s Restaurant in Clackamas about a month after his rescue, Haight, 69, flashed a sly grin that hinted at the other wild stories in his past — and possibly in his future, too.

There was the arrest, when he was 24, when he and four others were caught by federal officials trying to smuggle 40,000 tons of marijuana from Colombia to Florida by ship. And the time he and his girlfriend at the time found a dinghy abandoned in a Florida swamp, restored it and sailed it on both the East and West coasts.

But the misadventure in July that cost him his beloved sailboat, the Windswept II, hit him hard. After all, it wasn’t until Haight’s 60s that he was able to fully live the dream that he had cooked up as a child.

One of three sons, Haight grew up in Depoe Bay in a family of strict Jehovah’s Witnesses. Before he was even a teenager, he realized he believed none of what he was being told and yearned to escape his parents’ restrictive household. Sailing was one outlet. A local resident owned a small boat that he let the kids in town sail on, and Haight took every opportunity he had, between school and working in his parents’ restaurant.

Owning his own sailboat and exploring the world became his “secret wish,” the one he’d whisper to himself when blowing out his birthday candles, he said.

“You never run out of fuel,” Haight said. “You can go as far as you want.”

Haight came close to that dream in his early 20s, when he and a girlfriend briefly owned a sailboat in California and lived on it. But the dream collapsed when, working as a commercial fisherman, Haight was asked if he wanted to smuggle marijuana from Colombia into Florida. He needed the money, so he said OK.

It was his first attempt to smuggle drugs, Haight said. When the boat reached Tampa Bay, U.S. Customs Service agents boarded it, their guns drawn, and found about $14 million worth of marijuana, according to news articles at the time. Four of the five arrested men “appeared weathered from several weeks at sea,” The Tampa Times wrote on May 23, 1978.

Haight and his girlfriend sold the sailboat, and he served two years in federal prison, getting out in 1982. In the decades since, he worked mostly in construction and waited tables. He scuba-dived most of his life, and picked up hang-gliding in the early 1990s.

“I was just a regular guy,” he said.

After his mother died in 2013, Haight and his brothers sold her house, which dropped $66,000 into Haight’s lap. With that cash infusion, he bought the Windswept II, a 38-foot, 1999 wooden sailboat, in 2018. After outfitting it for a long trip, he sailed to Mexico in 2022. In July 2023, he sailed to Hawaii, then to Newport, in preparation for his next trip south.

He set sail from Newport on June 29, planning to stop in Santa Barbara to finish preparing the boat for a longer trip to Mexico. He headed out to sea around 1:30 p.m. under a clear, cloudless sky. The forecast called for storms south of his location, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

Haight sailed into a storm that was worse than expected, however. Winds nearly 60 miles per hour pushed his sailboat around for two days straight.

Unable to sail in those conditions, Haight decided to “hove to,” essentially putting his boat in park, while it drifted southeast.

He was in his bunk on July 2 when he heard a strange sound — the rattle of the sailboat’s automatic bilge pump. Designed to turn on if water seeped into the boat and reached a certain level, it had never activated before in the six years he’d sailed on the boat. Haight pulled up the floorboard and saw water in the bilge.

Oh, I’m sinking, Haight thought.

But he wasn’t afraid.

“There wasn’t anything to feel,” he added. “There was just to do.”

When he realized the pump wasn’t keeping up with the rising water, he concluded he urgently needed help.

“Mayday, mayday. This is sailing vessel Windswept II,” Haight said into the radio, to anyone who might hear him, then gave his location and said his boat was taking on water.

The Coast Guard took the call, and offered to bring him a larger pump. A ship nearby listened in to the conversation and diverted course to stand by in case Haight needed extra help.

Haight thought this response would solve the problem. But then his bilge pump broke — and a back-up pump shorted out. Haight now knew he was really in trouble.

“That was when I got concerned,” Haight said.

By around 11 p.m. on July 2, he was 95 miles off shore, standing in the cabin of the boat in ankle-deep ocean water.

Then the boat’s engine broke down, too, leaving him helpless in the wind and waves as the water sloshed over Haight’s feet.

‘Are you good?’

Commander Jay Kircher was asleep in his North Bend home on July 2 when his cell phone rang. It was 10:25 p.m. There was a man in a sailboat off the coast taking on water, he was told.

Kircher got out of bed, sat down in the living room and started making calls, quickly preparing an operation to help, and potentially rescue, the man. Kircher was worried about how far the helicopter would have to fly — the man was probably too far away for a boat to reach him in time — as well as the sea conditions and the darkness. Kircher requested that a Coast Guard airplane be deployed to circle the scene and monitor the operation from above, in case there was an emergency.

It was obvious this would be a difficult operation. The distance from shore — about 83 nautical miles west of Brookings, or about 95 land-measured miles — meant they would be alone if they had a problem and needed help themselves. Because of the masts and rigging on any sailboat, it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to lift the man in distress off of the deck. And the gale-force winds and the high waves meant both the pilot and a rescue swimmer would have extreme conditions to contend with.

“It was right on our limits, basically, for range,” Kircher said.

A crew departed North Bend in an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter at 11:17 p.m., July 2, for Brookings. They were carrying with them a 105-pound pump they planned to deliver to the sailboat — with both Haight’s pump and the Coast Guard pump working at the same time, there was a chance to save the boat.

By the time they landed around midnight, Haight had told the Coast Guard via radio that his own pump had failed, meaning he needed to be rescued. The Coast Guard crew unloaded the pump, fueled up to the top, and the pilot plugged the sinking boat’s GPS coordinates into his flight computer.

There were four of them in the helicopter: the pilot-in-command, a co-pilot, a rescue swimmer and a flight mechanic; the latter would be in charge of dropping the swimmer down into the ocean and then lifting him and the survivor up into the helicopter.

Pilot-in-Command Brandon Books, 30, brought the helicopter to about 500 feet above the water, under the clouds, where it was so dark the crew flew the whole way wearing night-vision goggles.

“Are any of you guys a little bit nervous?” the flight mechanic asked.

“Yeah, man,” Books said. “I’m a little bit nervous.”

Books, originally from Whitefish, Montana, got hooked on the idea of becoming a U.S. Coast Guard pilot as a kid while watching an episode of the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch” where the Coast Guard rescued fishermen, he said. On this day, Books was in the final weeks of his first assignment as a Coast Guard pilot.

The four of them flew for about 50 minutes before Books spotted the sole light shining from the top of the Windswept II’s main mast around 1:20 a.m.

When the helicopter appeared out of the darkness, Haight became more optimistic about his chances of survival.

In most missions of this sort, rescuers want to drop the rescuer onto the surface of the boat using a cable. That’s hard, if not impossible, with a sailboat, because of all the masts and sails and ropes and cords, especially in rough weather.

LeComer, the rescue swimmer, would have to go into the ocean and swim to the boat.

That wasn’t going to be easy either.

As the helicopter hovered, Books looked down at the waves. They were large, even larger than they’d expected.

“That’s kind of big,” Books said to LeComer over the helicopter communications system. “Are you good?”

“Oh,” LeComer said, “I’m ready to go.”

LeComer, 28, scooted to the door and the mechanic hoisted him out over the ocean and lowered him into the water.

LeComer, with a snorkel in his mouth and fins on his feet, quickly detached the hook from his harness and fixed the sailboat in his line of sight. The seas were so rough that his chief concern was that he might run out of strength while trying to swim to the sailboat. It didn’t help that when he fell into a trough between waves the Windswept II would sometimes disappear from his view.

When he reached the boat he realized it was too far gone for him to be able to climb onto it safely. The boat was leaning on its side, partially submerged. LeComer grabbed a line Haight had thrown into the water and pulled himself to the right side of the boat.

Haight had a briefcase and a bag ready with his belongings — including his high-school diploma, the ship’s log, and a cigar box with family keepsakes. He asked LeComer if he could take his bag with him.

“Only what’s in your pockets,” LeComer shouted. “I’ll give you one minute.”

Haight, wearing a life jacket, a long-sleeve shirt, jacket, jeans and tennis shoes, put his passport, the keys to his storage locker in Depoe Bay and some cash in his pockets and jumped into the water. LeComer grabbed him and, swimming sideways, kicked his fins while holding onto Haight with his right arm, propping him up on his hip.

Books, who had flown the helicopter about 50 yards away so the helicopter wouldn’t drown out their voices when LeComer and Haight tried to communicate, flew back once he saw LeComer detach from the sailboat.

“It’s going to be loud and windy,” LeComer said.

That’s when he noticed that Haight seemed almost calm, “a pretty seasoned mariner.”

After he hooked Haight onto his harness, LeComer gave a thumbs up to the helicopter hovering 100 feet above them, and the mechanic dropped the cable with the hook. The heavy waves and wind bounced LeComer and Haight around, moving them off-course from the descending cable.

They needed to put the cable right on the two dots in the ocean that were LeComer and Haight, a tough feat for even the most skilled pilot and mechanic in such conditions.

“Forward and right 10,” the flight mechanic said to Books, who then maneuvered the 9,000-pound helicopter about 10 yards as directed, then overshot by another 10 yards. “Back 10.”

Finally — after about eight minutes — LeComer was able to grab the cable. He attached it to his harness, gave the flight mechanic another thumbs up and the two soon were in the air.

Once they were in the helicopter, LeComer checked over Haight and concluded he didn’t need to go to a hospital. He gave him a warming blanket, and Books turned on the autopilot, lifting the helicopter up to 500 feet and directed it back toward Brookings. It was 1:42 a.m., just 22 minutes since the Coast Guard helicopter had arrived.

They flew under the clouds in almost complete darkness until Books spied clouds that were a little thinner.

“Do you want to climb up above these clouds?” Books asked the co-pilot.

“Yeah, it looks like it’ll be nicer up there,” the co-pilot said.

They climbed to about 1,500 feet above sea level, where they could see the stars. The relief was palpable once they spotted the shore lights, Books said.

While the Coast Guard crew regularly goes out on challenging rescue missions, this one on July 3 was particularly difficult, given how far the sinking boat was from shore, the weather and the condition of the sea.

The operation, Kircher said, “was kind of in a different league.”

‘Not over yet’

When LeComer got home early on the morning of the rescue, he scarfed down a breakfast burrito and called his mom to tell her an abbreviated version of the operation.

“Thanks for putting me in swimming lessons, mom,” LeComer said to her.

Books worked another week, wrapping up his three-and-a-half year assignment in North Bend. Three weeks later, he was in New Jersey for his new assignment.

Haight never figured out why his sailboat sprung a leak. It’s possible that part of the boat had been weakened while stuck on a sandbar the previous year, then was stressed too much by the strong winds on his way to California. But it had survived plenty of strong storms before the one that sank the boat, so he’s still unsure.

He bought a car in Portland and is planning to drive to Mexico to visit friends. While he hasn’t come to terms with losing his boat, he’s grateful for the opportunity the Windswept II gave him — and for the Coast Guard crew that saved him from it.

“How often does somebody get to live their dream?” Haight said. “And I’m still living my dream. It is not over yet.”

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I've sailed on 50 cruises. Here are 4 I'd book again as someone without kids.

• I've been on over 50 cruises with eight different lines and almost always travel without kids .
• I love Virgin Voyages since the line is dedicated to its adults-only ships.
• Celebrity Cruises is also a great adult-centric cruise with elevated dining and entertainment.

I've been cruising for over a decade and in that time, I've sailed on more than 50 ocean ships across eight different cruise lines .

Since I don't have kids and rarely travel with children, I've learned that some cruise lines cater to adults better than others.

Here are my top four cruises to book for an adults-only vacation .

I love Virgin Voyages for its clear adults-only policy.

Virgin Voyages is one of the few major ocean cruise lines that does not allow children under 18, which I enjoy.

The Richard Branson-owned brand is known for its beautiful Lady Ships, which have ample outdoor space and nightclubs and party spots inside.

Unlike other cruise lines, Virgin Voyages' dining concept is truly unique.

You won't find massive rooms or long buffet lines. Instead, the ships have specialty restaurants, including an Italian eatery and a stunning steak house, which are all included in the cruise fare.

I love the line's fast-casual pizza spot, but my favorite place to eat on a Virgin Voyages cruise is Gunbae. The Korean barbecue-inspired restaurant has shared tables with grills in the center and delicious food.

Disney Cruise Line is perfect for adults looking for some childhood nostalgia.

I love going to Disney theme parks , so it's no surprise that I also love Disney Cruise Line.

The brand definitely leans more into family travel, but there are plenty of dedicated adults-only areas on each of the line's ships.

One of my favorite places to hang out on the Dream or Fantasy ships is Meridian, an adults-only bar nestled between Palo and Remy, the two adults-only dining options.

This space has great views of the ocean and incredible bartenders who can shake or stir up just about anything.

After the sun goes down, the party really gets started at the nightclubs on the Disney ships . On a recent sailing on the Magic, I watched game shows, sang karaoke, and played trivia.

Celebrity Cruises is a great option for luxury sailing.

I recently tried out Celebrity Cruises for the first time, and it was a luxurious step up from its family-friendly sister company, Royal Caribbean . The cruise line is known for its beautifully decorated ships, intimate spaces, and over-the-top entertainment.

While sailing on the Ascent ship, I spent a lot of time at the Sunset Bar, which features Mediterranean-style drinks , incredible views, and live music in the evenings.

I also loved watching live shows in the theater every night. They combined acrobatics, magic tricks, dancing, and singing into spectacular events that left my jaw on the floor.

Norwegian Cruise Line is perfect for younger adults looking for a fun time.

I've sailed with Norwegian Cruise Line a few times, and I think it's the perfect brand for young adults. The ships are easy to navigate and feature some of the best staterooms at sea, with plenty of storage.

The top decks of the line's newer ships, like Prima and Viva, feature epic water slides, a go-kart track , and infinity pools overlooking the ocean.

It's certainly geared toward the young at heart, but I think the spaces are ideal for anyone looking for a good mix of fun and relaxation.

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Selling a startup in an ‘acqui-hire’ is more lucrative than it seems, founders and VCs say

Acqui-hires get leapfrogged in pay and seniority.

While the best startups are doing well , even in this tough venture capital market, others are struggling to raise new funding. If they can’t raise and haven’t become self-sustaining businesses, their best bet is to get acquired, even if it’s for a fraction of their last valuation. The alternative would be to run out of money and shut down. 

Such acquisitions may feel like a huge disappointment for founders and senior employees. They were dreaming of building a massive, highly valuable company that would make them rich. Instead, their equity could be worth little to nothing, they may have to take a role at the acquiring company, and they may even have to commit to work there for a period of time to get their full payout. 

But selling under such circumstances is often not as poor an outcome for founders and key staff as it initially seems. 

“Generally, when companies are acquired, it’s considered a down move,” said Nivas Ravichandran, one of the first employees at Frilp, a startup acqui-hired by Freshworks in 2015 . “But acquisitions are a great opportunity from a financial standpoint. If you come in via an acquisition, the pay and equity are better than if you join as a lateral hire.”

Buyers often reward the top team members for their hard work at the startup by giving them much better jobs and higher pay packages than they could land elsewhere with the same experience.

“The senior principal engineers usually take a decade or more to get to a level six or seven,” said Sri Chandrasekar, a managing partner at Point72 Ventures, referring to standard “leveling” at large tech companies like Google or Meta . Meanwhile, founders who he has seen acqui-hired “go in at level seven or eight. Many of them have four years of professional experience. That is a big jump.” Point72 Ventures has had over 15 of its portfolio startups exit through M&A.

Since large acquirers are often primarily interested in gaining access to a startup’s talent pool in these transactions — which is they’re often called acqui-hires — they design the deal to encourage the founder and key team members to remain on board for an extended period.

While traditional M&A deals often include retention bonuses for a management team, paid out 18 to 24 months post-acquisition, acqui-hires increasingly focus on incentives for the startup’s workforce. This means not just offering founders such deals, but key employees could receive higher salaries and overall compensation tied to extended equity vesting schedules.

Founder and team-centric deals

Acquirers “are often willing to give more seniority for these people not to have to put as much cash into the deal,” Chandrasekar said. “Those are the kinds of things that acquirers are getting increasingly clever about.” 

A founder, who recently sold his startup to a publicly traded company, told TechCrunch that the buyer structured the acquisition so that he and his co-founders received a higher stock grant rather than paying more to his startup’s investors.

“If they didn’t buy my company, I would never work for them,” he said. “I don’t find large public companies interesting after working in startups. Everything is just very slow.”

But the large compensation package and significant responsibility he received at his new company are compelling him to stay there. In other words, the incentives are working. And sometimes, people like that founder discover over time that they do like their companies.

When Frilp was acquired, for instance, Frilp’s co-founders and other employees vowed not to stay at the company for long. “They were saying, ‘We don’t like big companies’,” Ravichandran said, adding that by big, they meant companies with more than 100 employees. “But a lot of them ended up staying longer than five years. I stayed for seven years.”

Frilp had four founders, two of whom are still working at Freshworks, according to Ravichandran. Freshworks today is a public company with thousands of employees.

Freshworks, which went public in 2021 , acquired about a dozen startups while Ravichandran, who is now head of marketing at Spendfo , worked there. “When you get acquired, you have accelerated career growth,” he said. “Directorial positions were often offered to founders who came from acquisitions.”

Although acquisitions in which investors don’t receive a meaningful return are often unpublicized, they happen frequently. In Q2, 90% of the M&A transactions were undisclosed, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor . Of course, not all of these transactions were acquihires. Sometimes buyers want the technology and not the people. Sometimes they are competitors who want the customers and not the tech or the people.

But many are acquihires, allowing companies to gain a whole team of specialized talent in one swoop. Such was the case for Supaglue, a 4-person startup of data integration experts. Stripe bought the startup in March so the team could supercharge Stripe’s fast-growing Revenue and Finance Automation business, the founders told TechCrunch in March.

AI startups are now becoming an acquihire target, Point72’s Chandrasekar said. Large tech companies are now hunting for pre-ChatGPT-era AI startups. Many of those companies will not succeed because their product could be easily reproduced with the latest LLMs, but their machine learning and AI talent is very valuable. Last month, Airtable acquired Dopt for its AI-building chops.

In this market, being acqui-hired should not be viewed negatively, those who have been through it want other founders to know. Founders can be well-enough rewarded financially. They may discover rewarding long-term career opportunities at their new big employer.

And if they still have the entrepreneurial bug when their lock-up ends, they can always launch another new startup.

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One of the biggest questions looming over the drone space is how to best use the tech. Inspection has become a key driver, as the autonomous copters are deployed to…

Keychain aims to unlock a new approach to manufacturing consumer goods

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Gogoro delays India plans due to policy uncertainty, launches bike-taxi pilot with Rapido

Gogoro has deferred its India plans over delay in government incentives, but the Taiwanese company has partnered with Rapido for a bike-taxi pilot.

A16z offers social media tips after its founder’s ‘attack’ tweet goes viral

On Friday, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz tweeted out a link to its guide on how to “build your social media presence” which features advice for founders.

OpenAI shuts down election influence operation that used ChatGPT

OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian influence operation that was generating content about the U.S. presidential election, according to a blog post on Friday.…

Apple reportedly has ‘several hundred’ working on a robot arm with attached iPad

Apple is reportedly shifting into the world of home robots after the wheels came off its electric car. According to a new report from Bloomberg, a team of several hundred…

Welcome to Hull Stripes Your Source for Replacement Boat Stripes

Boat Stripes

At Hull Stripes we Manufacture Custom Replacement Boat Stripes , Automotive stripes, Safety stripes & More. A Boat Stripe is a very visable part of your Boat, so show it off. Replacement Stripes are what we do!!! Whether you are doing a Boat restoration project, or just replacing your existing stripes, we have what you need. We use 3M & Avery suppliers for our product giving you long lasting durable stripes. Our striping tape is easy to apply. If you need a Custom Striping size or color E-Mail Us . Our Stripes are the best.

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For cruiser, yacht, game boat or dinghy, Boat Stripes specializes in boat names, stripes, and registration numbers.

Create the look you want for your new boat or refurbish tired names and stripes.

Design your name, number and stripe kit and we’ll get everything you need to you to do-it-yourself.

Boat Name and Registrations

Design your own boat name, port name and registration numbers. Preview as many designs as you like.

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See the results of many satisfied customers and be inspired for the design of your name, registration numbers and stripe kit.

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