Indian American Financial Adviser Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

CHICAGO, IL— Indian American financial adviser in Chicago Vishal Savla has pleaded guilty to defrauding investors.

Savla, 37, admitted to tricking investors and family members out of more than $2 million. His guilty plea was to a single federal charge of wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

While he was running VCAP LLC, a Chicago-based investment fund that was said to trade in equities, options and futures contracts, Savla told clients that a computer trading error led to major losses, the attorney’s office said. Later, he admitted in federal court that the true cause of losses was a result of poor trading practices.

From 2014 up until earlier this year, Savla raised about $2.3 million from investors after promising substantial returns, it said.

His investment fund was “largely unsuccessfully” during that stretch, losing more than 95 percent of its investments.

Savla kept soliciting and accepting new investments while sending clients phony account statements that showed large profits instead of substantial losses, according to his plea agreement.

In December 2016, Savla claimed that a keyboard input error commonly known as a “fat finger trade” caused his fund to drop by roughly 90 percent in a single day, prosecutors said.

As part of his plea deal, Savla admitted that there was no such error, and that trading losses spurred the dramatic decline. Savla also acknowledged that he borrowed cash from family and friends to repay his investors, the plea agreement said.

Savla admitted to using $260,000 of investor money to finance his living expenses, the release added.

Savla’s sentencing is scheduled for January 9th. He faces up to 20 years in prison.