By K enneth Corbin

The Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing a Bay Area man of operating a massive Ponzi scheme targeting members of the Hindu temple he attended. The commission alleges that Satish Appalakutty defrauded at least 100 victims out of $37 million.

From early 2019 through March 2024, Appalakutty allegedly solicited investments to purchase discounted shares of well-known public companies or invest in pre-IPO businesses through two entities he controlled, Lorven Advisors and Lorven Funds.

In reality, the SEC alleges that "the purported investment opportunities were fictitious" and Appalakutty never made any investments on behalf of his victims. Instead, he allegedly made a series of Ponzi-like payments to his earlier investors, and pocketed $6.7 million for personal use, including $4.4 million that he poured into an investing-related start-up software company he ran.

Appalakutty couldn't immediately be reached for comment. Court records don't indicate that he has retained a lawyer in the SEC case. No one immediately responded to voice and email messages left with Vistalytics, the software start-up. Vistalytics still has a functioning website, but the site's copyright is dated 2021 and the most recent post on the company's blog, which previously had been updated frequently, is from March 2022.

Appalakutty, 53, of Milpitas, Calif., has never been registered as an investment advisor, but the SEC is asking the federal court in California's Northern District to bar him from any future association with an advisory firm. The SEC is also asking the court to order him to disgorge the money he allegedly misappropriated from investors and pay a civil monetary penalty.

The SEC alleges that some of the investors who trusted Appalakutty with their money met him while volunteering at a Bay Area Hindu temple. Others met him through friends who knew him.

Appalakutty allegedly passed himself off as an entrepreneur who could produce returns for investors that would top any bank's interest rate, while also assuring them that their money would be shielded from losses.

The SEC says that many investors trusted Appalakutty because of his connection to the temple and because he described himself as a savvy software engineer who had worked at various Silicon Valley fintech companies.

In addition to the public companies and pre-IPO investment opportunities he pitched, Appalakutty also enticed investors with promissory notes that offered guaranteed high interest rates, all of which were fabricated, according to the SEC. Appalakutty also allegedly promised guaranteed rates of return, typically annualized, that he said would range from 8% to 62.5% with no risk to investors' principal.

Appalakutty allegedly made various false representations about his purported investment operation, including telling one victim that he was able to obtain discounted shares of companies because of his connections with their executives, and another that he received the discount from major financial firms because he managed tens of millions of dollars in assets.

He allegedly made similar misrepresentations about his access to shares of pre-IPO companies.

The SEC's complaint describes the personal expenditures Appalakutty made with investors' money, including an electric car, a down payment on a house, and personal travel.

By early 2024, the SEC says the scheme began to break down as Appalakutty was having trouble making the promised payments to investors. By May 2024, Appalakutty, the Lorven entities he controlled, and Vistalytics "had virtually no cash in their bank accounts," according to the complaint.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 30, 2026 15:07 ET (20:07 GMT)

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