(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an emergency asset freeze and temporary restraining order to halt an ongoing fraudulent securities offering by Eric D. Lyons, a Massachusetts resident, in an attempt to conceal his misappropriation from certain hedge funds Lyons advised through his Massachusetts-based investment advisory businesses.

According to the SEC’s complaint, from mid-2017 to the present, Lyons and various investment adviser entities with the name Synchrony that Lyons controlled engaged in a scheme to misappropriate assets from hedge funds Lyons and these Synchrony adviser entities managed. The SEC alleges that Lyons transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Synchrony hedge funds to Lyons’ personal bank accounts to pay for personal expenses, including frequent vacation travel, entertainment, rent, automobile lease payments, and other personal expenses. Further, the SEC alleges that Lyons replaced some of the misappropriated money by engaging in a securities offering fraud, in which he obtained approximately $300,000 from an investor based on false and misleading statements about other potential large investors and a fabricated $100 million business valuation. In total, the SEC’s complaint alleges that Lyons and the Synchrony adviser entities raised approximately $700,000 from their misappropriation and securities offering fraud schemes.