The house was supposed to be safe. It was the collateral.

Marguerite was sixty-eight and she watched the video twice.

The first time on a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen in Ocala, on the laptop her granddaughter set up for her, with the sound low because the dog was asleep on the tile. The man in the video was wearing a navy polo. There was an American flag on the wall behind him. He talked about houses. He talked about families. He said the phrase "real estate done for you" the way a doctor says a diagnosis, calm, professional, already decided.

The second time she watched it with a pen in her hand.

She had been a hospice nurse for thirty-one years. She knew what it looked like when someone was trying to make a dying person comfortable. This did not look like that. This looked like the opposite. This looked like a young country. Growth. The share price chart on the screen went up and to the right, from ten dollars to twenty-five dollars and change, and the man said the words that made her stop the video and rewind them.

Zero investors, he said, have ever lost money.

She wrote that down.

The HELOC on the house came through in the spring. The house her husband died in, three years earlier, the mortgage almost gone. She took ninety thousand against it. She put another sixty from the IRA. She sent the money to a company called RAD Diversified REIT, and she got back a certificate and a login, and for a while, when she logged in, the number went up.

I.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed its civil complaint on July 29, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The defendants are RAD Diversified REIT Inc., its founder Brandon "Dutch" Mendenhall, and its co-founder Amy Vaughn. The complaint alleges the three of them, together with an affiliated entity called The Seminar Solution LLC, ran a $152 million fraud on more than 5,500 retail investors between November 2019 and March 2024.

A REIT is a real estate investment trust. That is the polite name. In plain English it is a company that pools money from a lot of people to buy real estate, and pays them back out of the rent and the resale. A nontraded REIT is one whose shares do not trade on a public exchange. That means the price is not set by a market. The price is set by the company. Which means the price is whatever the company says it is.

RADD said its shares were worth $10 at the beginning. By the time the redemptions were frozen, the company said the shares were worth $25.04.

The complaint alleges the valuations were prepared by Mendenhall's brother, who had no appraisal experience, and who relied in part on online estimates.

Read that slowly. The price of a security sold to more than five thousand retail investors was allegedly set by the founder's brother using Zillow.

II.

The pitch was Christian. The pitch was patriotic. The complaint alleges Mendenhall and his sales network invoked both to build trust, and used social media, in-person seminars, and unregistered sales agents to reach investors across the country. Many of those investors were unaccredited. That is the SEC's term for people who do not meet the income and net worth thresholds the regulators use to decide who can absorb the loss of a private investment. In practice it means ordinary people. Retirees. Nurses. Small business owners. The complaint alleges investors were pressured to fund their purchases with home equity loans, retirement accounts, life insurance proceeds, and credit cards.

Marguerite used the first two.

The pitch said the company bought distressed homes, fixed them up, and rented or sold them for a profit. That part was true in shape. The company did buy homes. What the complaint alleges is that the profit part never happened. RADD reported net operating losses every year from 2020 through 2024. In 2022 the loss was at least $31 million. In 2023 the loss was at least $22 million. Annual rental income never exceeded $5 million.

Meanwhile the share price went up.

That is the gap. The company was losing tens of millions a year while telling investors the shares were worth more every quarter. The rental income could not support the dividends. The complaint alleges the dividends were paid, in substantial part, with money from new investors.

That has a name. It is not the polite name.

III.

The pipe had a valve in the middle and the valve was labeled TSS.

The Seminar Solution LLC was an entity owned by Mendenhall and Vaughn. The complaint alleges approximately $54 million of investor money was routed from RADD into TSS. From TSS, according to the SEC, Mendenhall took at least $2.3 million for personal expenses and Vaughn took at least $2.5 million. The complaint itemizes what personal meant.

Federal tax payments. $691,000 for Mendenhall. $299,000 for Vaughn.

Private jet charters. $214,000 for Vaughn.

Luxury clothing and accessories. $173,000 for Vaughn.

Jewelry. $80,000 for Vaughn.

Adult nightclub outings. $40,000 for Vaughn.

Ticketmaster charges. Private school tuition. Pet care. A pawn shop.

Picture the ledger. On one side, a retired hospice nurse in Ocala sending in ninety thousand against a house. On the other, a $40,000 tab at a nightclub.

That part may be the saddest.

IV.

The houses did what the numbers said they would do.

Between 2022 and 2024, according to the SEC, RADD faced mortgage defaults and at least 166 foreclosure actions totaling nearly $50 million. In 2022 or 2023, the complaint alleges, a bank refused a $15 million line of credit and told the company why. It cited the $20 million annual losses. It cited the reliance on new equity raises to keep the operation running.

The bank saw it. The bank said no.

The investors did not see it. The investors got the newsletter.

In February 2024, RADD froze stock redemptions. That is the point at which a shareholder who wants their money back is told they cannot have it. At least $3 million in requests were outstanding when the valve closed.

Marguerite logged in on a Tuesday morning. She had planned to take out enough to fix the roof. The button was gone.

She called the number on the certificate. She got a recording.

V.

In March 2026, RADD and four affiliated entities filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The petition claimed more than three hundred single-family homes and vacant lots as assets. The number sounds substantial until you set it against the money that came in and the money that went out.

In May 2026, a federal grand jury indicted Brandon Mendenhall on a single count of mail fraud. The indictment alleges he inflated his personal income on a home mortgage application. He was arrested on June 1, 2026, and pleaded not guilty on June 5. His attorney, Mark Rankin, has not commented. Trial is scheduled for later this year. The presumption of innocence applies.

On July 29, 2026, the SEC filed the civil complaint. It seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, conduct-based injunctions, and officer and director bars against Mendenhall and Vaughn. TSS is named as a relief defendant, which is the term for an entity the government says was unjustly enriched by the alleged fraud and needs to give the money back. None of the SEC's allegations have been adjudicated. The defendants will have their answer.

VI.

Marguerite did not lose everything. She lost enough.

The HELOC still has to be paid. The IRA distribution was taxed. The roof is still leaking. Her granddaughter helped her print the SEC complaint from the internet and she sat at the same kitchen table where she had watched the video and she read the parts about the nightclub twice, because the first time she thought she had misread it.

She had not misread it.

The video is still online. The man in the polo is still calm. The flag is still on the wall. The phrase "real estate done for you" is still in the description. The share price chart is not there anymore, because there is no share price anymore, because the shares do not trade, because they never did.

She thought she was buying a house.

She was the mortgage.