- 1Complaint charges Richard Teplitsky with a ponzi scheme running since 2018.
- 2He told the FBI he began faking loan documents around the mid-1990s.
- 3He estimated 170-190 investors are owed tens of millions of dollars.
A criminal complaint against Woodhill Capital Corp CEO Richard Teplitsky describes a far longer fraud than the ponzi scheme he is charged with. Woodhill is based in western New York, and the complaint charges Teplitsky with running a ponzi scheme since 2018.
What he told the FBI
In an FBI interview, Teplitsky said he has been offering investment opportunities in fake equipment finance deals for thirty years. According to the criminal complaint, at some point around the mid-1990s Woodhill was not collecting enough from borrowers to pay what it owed its investors. Teplitsky then began creating fictitious loan documents that falsely told investors their money was funding loans. Many investor funds, the complaint says, were instead used to pay earlier investors.
Teplitsky allegedly said the deals were high-interest but risky, producing a default rate of nearly 50%, and that he paid investors anyway.
Scale
The scheme snowballed over time, with most deals in the last ten years being completely fake. As of March 2026, Teplitsky estimated that 170 to 190 investors were owed tens of millions of dollars, with only 5% to 10% of that attributable to real deals.
Source reporting: deBanked.
