Former East Bay financial advisor charged with allegedly operating long-running $9.5 million Ponzi scheme

Date: July 21, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

OAKLAND — A federal grand jury indicted Edwin Emmett Lickiss Jr., on one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering in connection with an alleged $9.5 million investment fraud scheme.

According to the indictment filed on July 17, 2025, and unsealed today, between 1998 and September 2024, Lickiss was a financial advisor based in Danville and Alamo, Calif., who owned and operated Foundation Financial Group, a firm that provided investment services to investors in the Northern District of California, Idaho, and throughout the United States. Lickiss was a registered broker until 2014, when the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority suspended his broker’s license. Despite the suspension and loss of his broker’s license, Lickiss allegedly continued to solicit and obtain investments from victim investors until around September 2024.

The indictment alleges that as part of his scheme, Lickiss falsely represented to investors that he would invest their funds in government bonds and other bonds. To induce his victims to invest their money with him, Lickiss claimed he had exclusive access to fictitious bonds that paid very high rates of returns, including rates in excess of 20 percent. Lickiss described the fictitious bonds as safe, secure, and tax-free, and falsely claimed, among other things, that they could be redeemed at any time.

In order to convince investors that he had invested their funds as promised, Lickiss allegedly gave fraudulent promissory notes that included the terms of the fake bond investments and purported to track investors’ total investment in the fake bonds. Lickiss also occasionally made lulling payments to victim investors, falsely describing the payments as interest that had accrued on the nonexistent bonds, when, in fact, the payments were made with funds Lickiss fraudulently obtained from subsequent victim investors. In addition to making the foregoing misrepresentations, Lickiss allegedly failed to disclose to victim investors that he had been suspended in 2014 from association with any broker-dealer and that he subsequently lost his broker’s license in 2016.

Instead of investing the funds as promised, Lickiss allegedly used victim investors’ funds to pay earlier investors, in the manner of a Ponzi scheme, and for his personal use, including cash withdrawals, home renovations, travel, and car, mortgage, and personal credit card payments. In all, Lickiss allegedly obtained at least $9.5 million from no fewer than 50 victim investors.

United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian, IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Oakland Field Office Special Agent in Charge Linda Nguyen, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Sanjay Virmani made the announcement.

Lickiss is scheduled to make his initial appearance on July 22, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins in Courtroom F in San Francisco.

An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Defendant faces a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the wire fraud count, and 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the money laundering count. Any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also filed a civil enforcement action against Lickiss in the Northern District of California.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ryan Arash Rezaei and Benjamin J. Wolinsky are prosecuting the case with the assistance of Lynette Dixon. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by IRS-CI and the FBI. The U.S. Attorney’s Office thanks the Atlanta Regional Office of the SEC for its assistance in the investigation.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.