The SEC Says a $16 Million Scheme Promised Guaranteed Returns and Investment Insurance. Neither Existed.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint on 10 September 2026 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York against Ernest Ossei Boateng and two New Jersey companies he founded, Intercontinental Wealth Network LLC and I Wealth Network LP. The allegation is a Ponzi scheme of roughly $16 million. The mechanics described in the complaint are worth understanding on their own terms, because the same two claims recur across this category of case.

These are allegations. Nothing has been proven, and the defendants have not yet answered in court.

What the SEC alleges

• Approximately $16 million raised from more than 200 investors
• A period running from January 2020 through at least March 2026
• More than $5.8 million misappropriated for personal expenses, including buying, renovating and furnishing a home
• Approximately $6.6 million used for Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors
• More than $750,000 lost in high-risk, speculative day trading

Add the second and third figures together and they exceed $12 million of the roughly $16 million raised. On the SEC account, most of the money never went into anything resembling the strategy that was sold.

The two claims that should not be possible

Investors were allegedly promised guaranteed fixed returns from a low-risk fund strategy. A guaranteed return on a securities investment is not a feature that exists. Any strategy capable of losing money — which is every strategy that invests in securities — cannot guarantee a rate of return, and an adviser offering one is either mistaken about their own product or describing something other than what they are selling.

The second claim concerned insurance.

The defendants' sales pitch assured victims their investments were safe — telling many their money was protected by investment insurance.

There is no such thing as insurance against investment losses in the sense implied. SIPC protection, which covers customers of a failed brokerage, restores missing securities and cash when a broker-dealer fails; it does not reimburse anyone for an investment that fell in value or for a fraud dressed up as a fund. FDIC insurance covers deposits at banks, not securities. When an offer invokes insurance against loss, there is generally no policy behind the word.

Who was targeted

The SEC says the scheme was marketed primarily to Christians of Ghanaian heritage in New York and New Jersey, many of them with no investment experience. Smith described the investor group directly.

The defendants' investors included retirees, taxi drivers, home health care providers, students, an ailing widow with young children, and at least two churches and one prayer group.

This pattern has a name in enforcement practice: affinity fraud. Recruitment runs along the lines of an existing community — a congregation, a national-origin group, a professional association — so that the ordinary due diligence a stranger would attract is displaced by trust in the introducer. The structural problem is that early payouts to respected members of the group function as testimony, which is exactly what Ponzi-like payments are for.

The charges

The complaint alleges violations of the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 against all three defendants, and of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 against Boateng and Intercontinental Wealth Network. The Commission seeks permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, and conduct-based injunctions against Boateng and Intercontinental.

What investors can verify without help

• Whether the person and firm are registered, through the SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system and FINRA BrokerCheck
• Whether the security itself is registered or exempt — an unregistered offering is not automatically fraudulent, but it removes a layer of disclosure
• Whether any promised guarantee is written into an offering document, or exists only in conversation
• Whether returns can be verified from statements issued by a custodian independent of the person selling the investment