The paperwork that came with a 25% guarantee

On 10 September 2026 the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ernest Ossei Boateng and two New Jersey companies he owns, Intercontinental Wealth Network LLC and I Wealth Network LP, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The complaint alleges that from at least January 2020 until at least March 2026 he raised at least $16 million from at least 200 investors for a pooled vehicle called the I-Fund. Nothing in it has been tested in court.

Three documents went to at least some investors: a Confidential Private Offering Memorandum, an Investment Strategy and Agreement, and a Certificate of Deposit.

What was in the folder

What is known about all three comes from the complaint. The memorandum ran about 50 pages. It named Intercontinental as general partner and investment manager, stated the fund's objective as annual absolute returns from event-driven and value trading in publicly traded securities, and told investors they would have no management role.

The investment agreement came in two parts: a one-page sheet headed Net Annual Returns, and a management agreement giving Intercontinental full power and discretion over every investment decision. The fee terms were printed on it — a quarterly management fee of 0.5% of the net asset value of each capital account, plus a performance fee of 20% of annual profit. No capital accounts were ever maintained for individual investors, the complaint alleges, and the amounts taken far exceeded what those terms allowed. Some investors were told there would be no fees at all.

The certificates did the selling. They carried Intercontinental's name, were signed by Boateng as Advisor or IWealth Rep, and certified that the investor had deposited a stated sum, 100% of which went into the fund. Most stated a guaranteed fixed rate of return, typically 25% a year and in some cases 100% or more, a term of usually three years, and a maturity date. Virtually all, the complaint says, carried an automatic renewal provision that rolled the investment over at maturity. Many named the brokerage firm holding the money and said the investment was covered by what they called financial or investment insurance. No such insurance was ever acquired, the complaint alleges.

The arithmetic on the slide

A slide deck quoted in the complaint did the rest. One slide told potential investors that a 25% return on investment with compound interest would turn $24,000 into $1,000,000 in ten years, after which reinvesting the $1,000,000 would pay an investment return of $250,000 a year, allowing retirement after ten years of working.

"A good person leaves an inheritance for their children."
— a slide used at in-person solicitations, quoted in the SEC complaint

The complaint alleges investors without cash were encouraged to borrow it, on a promise that fund proceeds would service the loan, or to cash out a retirement account against typically an extra 15% in the first year to cover the penalties. The product was sold variously as a wealth building program, a supplemental income program and a bond program, and some certificates named a VIX trading program. Not a dollar, the complaint alleges, was ever invested in bonds or in VIX-related products.

The memorandum against itself

The contradiction sits inside the paperwork. The same memorandum described the investment as "suitable only for sophisticated investors" and called the trading program speculative, entailing substantial risks — language the SEC alleges was aimed at people unlikely to read it.

The complaint describes the group the offering was marketed to: primarily Christians of Ghanaian heritage in New York and New Jersey, some of them immigrants to the United States. Solicitation ran through in-person meetings, telephone calls and written communications including text messages, with presentations made to at least two churches and a prayer group affiliated with that group, and other investors arriving by word of mouth. Investors included retirees, taxi drivers, home health care providers, students and an ailing widow with young children, as well as at least two churches and one prayer group, at least one of which planned to use the promised returns to buy or build a church building. Boateng is himself originally from Ghana, immigrated to the United States in approximately 2016, and used the reputation he had built inside that group to gain investors' trust, the complaint alleges.

"The defendants' sales pitch to victims included assuring them that their investments were safe and without risk—telling many their money was protected by so-called 'financial, investment insurance.' That's as big of a red flag as we see in these types of scams."
— Thomas P. Smith, Jr., Associate Director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, in the Commission's press release

The search that cost nothing

A search of EDGAR, the Commission's public filing database, run on 21 September 2026, returns no matching companies for I Wealth Network. A search for Intercontinental Wealth returns one unrelated San Antonio adviser, Intercontinental Wealth Advisors LLC. A full-text search of the same database for Intercontinental Wealth Network, I Wealth Network and Ossei Boateng returns zero documents — no Form D, no exempt-offering notice, no filing of any kind. That absence is not itself one of the charges: the Commission pleaded fraud, not a registration violation.

A licence check would have shown the rest. According to the complaint, Boateng has never been registered with the Commission in any capacity, holds no professional or FINRA licences, and has never been associated with a registered adviser or broker-dealer. He sat the Series 6 and Series 63 examinations in 2016 and failed both, the pleading says, and neither company has ever been registered.

The Commission's own affinity-fraud guidance tells investors to check out everything, no matter who brings the opportunity.

What is not settled

Approximately $6.6 million of the money raised went back out as purported principal and interest to earlier investors, the complaint alleges, and at least $5.8 million was taken for personal use. According to the complaint, only approximately $5.4 million ever reached the brokerage accounts, where net trading losses came to approximately $750,000. Investors who asked how they were doing were sent statements the SEC says were fabricated, bearing a registered brokerage firm's logo; that firm is not named.

No criminal case against Boateng or either company could be located in any public source as of 21 September 2026, and there is no asset freeze, no receiver and no temporary restraining order. The complaint seeks no emergency relief, and the public docket shows only it and a civil cover sheet. Whether investor money is recoverable is unknown, and no net figure is given for what investors are out of pocket. No answer has been filed, no defence counsel appears on the public record, and Boateng has not publicly responded. Every allegation here is unproven.