‘Be a real-estate badass’: Podcaster was running an $11 million Ponzi scheme, says SEC

Matthew Motil, 42, of North Olmstead, Ohio, allegedly ripped off 50 investors as part of a scheme in which they believed they were investing in a real-estate flipping business that would pay them huge returns, according to civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in federal court in Ohio.

In 2022, after the scheme collapsed, Motil filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, claiming that his investors were creditors. The SEC said they were victims of a fraud. 

An attorney who represented Motil in the bankruptcy proceeding said he was not involved and unaware of the SEC’s case against his former client. It wasn’t immediately clear if Motil had retained an attorney to represent him in the matter brought by the SEC.

Motil, a self-proclaimed entrepreneur and real-estate expert, billed himself as “Dr. Matt Motil,” and urged listeners of his podcast and visitors to his website to “fire [their] boss, quit [their] 9 to 5, and build a business/lifestyle [they] love earning a passive income from real estate investments,” according to the SEC complaint.

As part of the scheme, the SEC said Motil hosted 147 podcasts accessible on Apple and YouTube called “The Cash Flow King, The Realest Real Estate Podcast.”

“Motil used podcasts and social media platforms to bolster his reputation as an investing expert while fraudulently targeting investors’ hard-earned retirement assets, including, in at least one instance, almost the full balance of an investor’s self-directed IRA,” said Mark Cave, of the SEC’s enforcement division.

Motil claimed to offer “investment opportunities ranging from $10,000 to $10 million,” the SEC said, in return for promissory notes on first-lien debt held on real estate in northern Ohio.

According to the SEC’s complaint, Motil told investors he would pay returns out of profits from renovating, reselling, refinancing and renting the properties. But investigators said he never secured the debt or used investor money to make renovations, instead using it to buy lavish items for himself and to pay earlier investors.

In one case, he raised $1 million form a group of 20 investors on the same $47,000 house he had purchased in northern Ohio, the SEC said.

Motil’s alleged victims included a cancer researcher and an active-duty U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, the SEC said.

Investigators say Motil used $1 million of the money to pay credit-card bills for him and his wife, $107,000 on a seven-month rental of a lakeside mansion, $73,000 for courtside seats to Cleveland Cavaliers games, $45,000 to repay student debt and $13,900 at numerous pizzerias.

Motil’s 35-year-old wife, Amy, was also named as a relief defendant in the case, as the SEC said she had benefited directly from the scheme. She couldn’t immediately be reached, and it wasn’t unclear whether she had retained an attorney.