Families Fear the Worst After Savings Disappear in Miami-Based Investment Program

Investors who entrusted millions of dollars to Miami-based Disruptive MCA are fighting to recover their money after discovering that the company, which stopped delivering payments last year, is tied to a sport-horse enthusiast from Doral whom federal regulators previously accused of running a sprawling deceptive trade scheme.

Investors across the nation have contacted New Times to recount how their funds in Disruptive MCA went missing and the company made allegedly empty pledges to make them whole. A merchant cash advance firm with its address listed in Brickell, Disruptive MCA halted payments to investors in December 2022, claiming its computer system had been hacked.

Some initially believed the explanation, but as the months passed, their money remained inaccessible, and they made an alarming finding: Disruptive MCA was registered in the name of Angelo Jose Sarjeant's wife.

Sarjeant, a 30-year-old Miami-area resident and equine sports aficionado, has been at the center of civil fraud claims in Miami court and, in a separate case, was sued by the feds in 2020 for allegedly running a deceptive trade scheme through a firm called Driver Loan. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ordered Sarjeant to reimburse nearly $3 million in the Driver Loan case, and he was permanently banned from deposit-taking.

On the heels of the ban, Disruptive MCA, registered under Sarjeant's wife Dayanna Delgado, ramped up advertising on Facebook and began amassing new investors' money.

After learning about the CFPB case and hearing allegedly nonsensical excuses about where his money went, one investor — a former trucking-business owner who was cut off from his savings in Disruptive MCA — tells New Times he can't help but feel scammed.

"I knew the ship was coming. All signs point to the money is gone," he says. "At this point, I just hope they don't fool anybody else."

Those who lost money in Driver Loan were appalled to learn that Disruptive MCA was able to solicit new investors and market itself on a major social media platform in spite of the federal action against Sarjeant. One woman, who was caring for her newborn and cancer-stricken mother when her funds vaporized, says she is still reeling from the Driver Loan scheme.

"You know how hard it is recovering from giving birth and then seeing my mom recovering from a major surgery for cancer, and not being able to tell her that we lost our money?" the woman tells New Times. "I keep blaming myself, but at the same time, they are good at what they are doing."

When reached by New Times, Sarjeant's and Delgado's attorney in Miami circuit court, Edward Buchanan, declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

No More Sleepless Nights

Mark wanted out of the rat race.

He spent most of his waking hours running a trucking business, on call 24/7, with few opportunities to wind down and spend time with his wife and kids in North Carolina. He needed an escape valve — a reliable source of income that didn't pull him a hundred miles away from home for weeks at a time.

"A trucker on the road, anything happens at 2 a.m., I gotta deal with it," Mark, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of privacy concerns, tells New Times. "I was looking for a way to make a steady income, weekly installments type of thing."

When he saw the opportunity to sell his business for a healthy sum amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mark pounced, and with the proceeds from the sale in hand, he looked around for a secure place to park his money. He believed he found what he wanted when a Facebook ad flashed on his screen for Disruptive MCA.

It didn't seem like some pie-in-the-sky company.

The firm had a sharp-looking website and, as an investor in Disruptive MCA, Mark was in solid company, alongside educated investors, some with prior experience in merchant cash advance companies.

Disruptive MCA advertised big returns on fixed investment periods from 12 to 72 weeks. According to the company's website, the longer investors kept their money in the program, the better the returns, as high as a 30-percent rate.

For most of 2022, while periodic payments from Disruptive MCA were flowing in, Mark felt he'd fulfilled his dream of cashing in his chips from his years grinding it out on the road and managing his trucking business. Finally, he'd have some rest — no more sleepless nights worrying in the wee hours about logistics or a broken-down trucking rig, he recalls thinking.
Then, this past December, he and his fellow Disruptive investors received a cryptic email claiming the company had been "kidnapped from the original partners."

"On behalf of the hardworking team of the company who did not agree on changing the values of itself, we apologize and feel the need to notify about this massive scam before more parties may be affected," the email stated.

Hours later, investors received another email claiming Disruptive MCA's computer system had been "breached/hacked." The new message declared: "Disruptive MCA is here to stay, and you will be paid."

The company later stated in a December 14 email that it would be pausing operations for 90 days.

The emails left Mark and other investors perplexed, not knowing what to believe. But when Disruptive MCA stopped paying them, they feared the worst. Cut off from their money, they began to dig deeper.

That's when several investors discovered Disruptive MCA's familial connection to Angelo Jose Sarjeant, whose wife, Dayanna Delgado, was the registered officer of Doppelt AS LLC (Disruptive MCA's legal name) when the company was formed.

Disruptive MCA investors tell New Times they were shocked when they came upon the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau action against Driver Loan and the resulting June 2021 stipulated judgment under which Sarjeant was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and reimburse millions of dollars to prior investors whom Driver Loan allegedly deceived.

As part of the civil judgment, the CFPB permanently banned Sarjeant from owning, working for, or providing services to businesses that take deposits. He told the court last year that he was attempting to reimburse clients but was steeped in financial problems, saying he had $27.18 in his bank account and no assets in his name.

Driver Loan and Disruptive MCA's investment model was similar: investors would hand over their funds, and the capital would purportedly be used to fund third-party loans (in the case of Driver Loan) or small-business cash advances (in the case of Disruptive MCA).

One of many who stand to suffer massive losses in Disruptive MCA, Mark says he is out more than $400,000 and doesn't expect to get much of it back. He questions why regulators did not put Disruptive MCA under the microscope at its inception in light of the CFPB case and the federal deposit-taking ban against Sarjeant.

"I try not to think about it because I get so upset. I don't want to get short-tempered with my kids. But how do you not think about losing that kind of money?" Mark asks.

There was a glimmer of hope when Disruptive MCA claimed it would resume reimbursements beginning in the spring of 2023. But in late April, it sent out a notice that it was again "unable to meet weekly payments at this time."

"With great disappointment, we have to inform you that Disruptive MCA has not been able to resume business activities as intended. We will continue to work hard to get back on track as soon as possible," the email stated.

Mark says the company offered him a reimbursement plan that stretched out nearly to 2026, well beyond the date by which he was supposed to be repaid under his agreements with the company.

"My wife's had to look for a job. Now we find out we're having another child — so that was a surprise in addition to everything else. We're in a position where I don't make enough money now," he says.

To no avail, Mark says, he demanded that the company provide documentation of how his funds were deployed, and evidence of the supposed security breaches that the company was blaming for payment delays.

In some instances, investors have been advised that if they speak out against the company, it'll hurt the business and they'll ruin their chances of getting their money back. In Mark's view, it's a way of keeping disgruntled investors from bringing to light what they've learned about the firm.

Several investors in Driver Loan and Disruptive MCA have nonetheless reached out to financial regulators, and some have communicated with federal law enforcement about their experience with the companies.

A Friendly Face

Angelo Jose Sarjeant's legal troubles date back long before the fallout from Disruptive MCA.

In 2017, Enoc Martinez claimed in Miami-Dade court that Sarjeant and his father, Angelo A. Sarjeant, were illegally retaining funds that he had entrusted to them as part of the Sarjeants' "investment program" involving the purchase of several vehicles. Martinez said he received only two of six promised vehicles and that his money for the remaining four cars was never refunded.

A judge granted a final judgment against the Sarjeants for $640,000 in favor of Martinez.

Also in 2017, claimant Luigi Quercia sued the father and son in Miami, alleging that they fraudulently induced him into investing in a foreign money-exchange business. Quercia claimed they had "no intention of using [his] money for the proposed business plan" and that they made minimal payments to him before ceasing reimbursement altogether.

Quercia's case was dismissed for lack of prosecution in 2020.

More recently, a 2021 civil case alleged that the younger Sarjeant and Delgado (his wife) defrauded plaintiff Henry Arteaga out of more than $120,000. Arteaga claims he invested the money with Delgado in exchange for a 20 percent interest in another cash-advance company, this one called DIDG Investments LLC.

Arteaga alleges the couple made off with his money and spent it to bankroll their rent, restaurant outings, and luxury items, including high-priced horses and equine sport activities, one of Sarjeant's hobbies.

"Angelo Jose Sarjeant Ponceleon and Dayanna Delgado conspired to convince the plaintiff to loan the monies to DIDG Investments knowing fully that they thereafter would divert the monies... to themselves, their family members, and to other entities," the lawsuit claims.

While many investors who've alleged big losses on deals tied to Angelo Jose Sarjeant have never met him, Arteaga claims to know the man in the flesh. While living in Miami, Arteaga spent time with Sarjeant and his family and toured a Doral office where Delgado and Sarjeant ran their business, he says.

Arteaga says Sarjeant, a Venezuelan native who came to the Miami area with his family as a youth and attended high school in Doral, has a warm personality and a good sense of humor.

"He's so lovely. If you met him, you would like him," Arteaga says of the younger Sarjeant. "He makes you feel comfortable. You can go to his house and he makes barbecue for you."
Social media posts show Sarjeant has an affinity for equine sports and has participated in ranch sorting tournaments, where competitors on horseback wrangle confused cattle. He won a Southeast Regional competition in the all-handicap level at the 2022 Ranch Sorting National Championships in Georgia.

According to Arteaga, Sarjeant also took a liking to expensive watches and luxury vehicles.

"He spends money to show other people he's a millionaire — it's part of the 'movie,'" Arteaga opines.

While Arteaga claims Sarjeant is behind DIDG, Sarjeant denies as much, saying he shouldn't be named in Arteaga's case in part because he isn't a registered officer of the company. The defense team also argues that the fraud allegations are vague and that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong format — as a claim for individual damages, as opposed to an action known as a "shareholder derivative" case.

DIDG filed a counterclaim alleging Arteaga took information from the company "with the intent to build a business which would be essentially a copy of the business that Sarjeant built and compete with defendants."

Arteaga's case against Delgado, Sarjeant, and DIDG is still pending in Miami-Dade circuit court.

Feds Claim Deceptive Trade

Hearing stories of Disruptive MCA stirred up stinging memories for those who suffered losses in the Driver Loan program.

One investor tells New Times she lost tens of thousands of dollars in Driver Loan while caring for a newborn child and helping her mom through a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Like Mark's Disruptive MCA situation, she came across Driver Loan through a Facebook ad directing her to marketing materials that promised "amazing returns," as she phrased it. She first invested in Driver Loan in 2020 and encouraged her mom to do the same until they had more than $100,000 tied up in the company, she says.

"I worked really hard for that money. I came to the U.S. from South America around 2008 and learned English in four months," says the investor, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation by Angelo Jose Sarjeant. "I got a degree and started working some high-paying jobs, and it was going really good for me. But when my mom got cancer in March 2021, the game plan changed for me completely."

When Driver Loan stopped paying, she didn't have the heart to tell her mother right away, she says. In her family, she was known as a tech-savvy, meticulous researcher who always did her due diligence in financial deals.

"I have that reputation in my family, especially my mom. She knows what I'm about," she says. "I had to go to my family and ask for money. I'm almost 40. I'm not supposed to be doing that. But this guy put me through all that. I've missed out on so many opportunities because they didn't return my money."

Driver Loan's business was centered on issuing loans to Uber and rideshare drivers, among other recipients, which allegedly totaled more than $30 million before the CFPB moved to shut down the business.

Beginning in 2020, Driver Loan solicited investors or "depositors" to fund those loans, which it touted as legitimate investments. In actuality, the CFPB alleged, the company was misleading borrowers about the loans' interest rates, which reached usurious levels as high as 900 percent APR in some instances, according to the regulatory action.

"The company deceived depositors seeking a safe rate of return while deceiving rideshare workers about the cost of its 900% APR loans," said the CFPB's then-Acting Director David Uejio.

The bureau has been seeking a contempt order against Angelo Jose Sarjeant for more than a year, claiming he has failed to repay Driver Loan investors and refused to address questions about undisclosed accounts where Driver Loan funds flowed.

In court filings last year, Sarjeant claimed he paid back approximately $1.7 million of the $2.9 million Driver Loan judgment against him but was broke and unable to pay the remainder.

"As I mentioned before, I have all the intentions of paying back all investors, but l don't currently have the funds," he wrote in a note to the court, docketed in early 2022.

In August 2021, roughly three months after Sarjeant entered into the stipulated judgment with the feds, Disruptive MCA started soliciting investors on a dedicated Facebook page, which became spotted with motivational platitudes and celebrity quotes. One post from June 2022 declared, "Become a Buyer Member today and start earning passive income!"

"Making money is art, and working is an art. And good business is the best art," the company's post from October 2022 states, quoting Andy Warhol.