The complaint was filed in Florida federal court and alleges that Mario D. German Law Center PA and Nexus Capital Management LLC fraudulently induced Global Resource to transfer the money into the law firm’s escrow account to keep the money to benefit themselves.
Escrow For International Purchases
Global Resource purchases automotive and industrial materials and refines them to recycle the valuable metals they contain. The company needed help making payments to catalytic converter suppliers in Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia. A supplier referred them to Nexus Capital Management, which claimed to have experience with transferring money overseas, and said it used German Law Center bank accounts for escrow transactions.
Global Resource transferred $178,000 to German Law Center’s Bank of America IOLTA account in the summer of 2020. The South American suppliers signed an escrow agreement allowing Nexus to receive 2.5% commission to facilitate the payments.
According to the suit, Nexus and German Law Center never released the funds and questions from Global Resource were not answered.
Sean Ramey, Global Resource’s owner, spoke with a German Law Center representative in October and was told they would advance $20,000 to a supplier. According to the complaint, this was a tactic to stall, and the firm created a false wire transfer confirmation.
“German Law Center never intended to pay this advance, never paid this advance, and in fact made this representation to convince plaintiff that defendants had not stolen plaintiff’s funds or committed a fraud,” the complaint states.
A representative of German Law Center also gave several reasons the funds weren’t transferred, which included wrong account numbers from suppliers, delays due to anti-money laundering regulations, and claiming the money was earning interest by being invested.
Global Resource alleges that its money has not been returned and it never received the catalytic converters because the suppliers were never paid.
“Defendants have avoided plaintiff, concealed what happened to plaintiff’s money, and made representations designed to lull plaintiff into believing nothing had gone wrong so that plaintiff would not exercise its legal rights or alert the criminal authorities,” the suit states.
Global Resource’s suit seeks the return of its money, punitive damages, interest, and recovery of legal expenses.
In a Law360 article about the case, Scott Silver, Silver Law Group’s managing partner, told the publication “Attorney escrow accounts exist to protect the client, and this case alleges a serious breach of fiduciary duty by a lawyer who allegedly used his escrow account to defraud a client.”
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Silver Law Group is a nationally-recognized investment fraud and securities arbitration law firm with extensive experience recovering losses for investors through arbitration and in court. Our attorneys represent clients around the country and are committed to helping recover losses from fraud.
If you need help recovering money lost to fraud, please contact Scott Silver, Silver Law Group’s managing partner, for a no-cost consultation at ssilver@silverlaw.com or toll-free at (800) 975-4345. Scott is the chairman of the Securities and Financial Fraud Group of the American Association of Justice.