The SEC cares about you raising money

[Jillian Sidoti]

This is a post I put on FB about raising money through advertising: 

For all of you that think that the SEC doesn't care about your general solicitation, you could not be more wrong. Today the SEC came out with this as part of their complaint against a defendant selling private securities:

"Respondents did not have pre-existing, substantive relationships with a number of the Fund’s investors and engaged in a general solicitation of public interest in the offering through Fund's website and traditional media interviews."

It continues to be unlawful to solicit for investors outside an applicable exemption such as one under Rule 506(c). This means solicitation on FB, FB pages, your website, Linked In, other social media, or standing up in the front of the room at your local REIA and asking "does anyone want to invest?"

Ask yourself: "do I really have a pre-existing, substantive relationship with all of my FB friends or all of those in that FB group I just posted to?" Such a relationship is "intimate knowledge of one's financial ability to invest." You can achieve this through an investor qualification form and that is the safest way to achieve such a relationship.

I see this type of offense all the time and people always have an excuse as to why the rules don't apply to them...until they do apply to them.

By the way, the defendant above raised a total of $567,000 - not millions of dollars. So if you don't think the SEC will care about "little ol' you" you couldn't be more wrong. You are what is referred to as "low hanging fruit."

[Scott Mac]

@Jillian Sidoti

Hi Jillian,

Too bad they don't allow the sales pitch and then the weeding out the wheat from the chaff using the accredited investor qualification form.

It would mean more business for us and for you to.

I guess it's up to congress as to how that goes.

But it would be a nice boost to have it that way. Like weeding through job applications.

I guess this way, the voters who they prohibit from participating don't know what they are missing and will still vote for them.

Just my 2 cents.

Scott...