FRESNO, CA (KMJ) A Fresno-based hard money lender, David Hardcastle, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in two schemes tied to the Bitwise scandal.
Federal prosecutor say Hardcastle and a partner altered loan documents, forged signatures, hid higher interest rates and reserves, and misused funds; causing roughly $45M in combined investor losses.
Separately, Hardcastle ran a Ponzi-style scheme, misrepresenting fund performance, recycling investor money to pay returns, and inflating asset values through insider transactions.
Hardcastle faces up to 20 years when he’s sentenced in September.
News release from Fresno Federal Court:
Startop Investments LLC Hard Money Loan Scheme
According to court documents, from December 2022 through May 2023, Hardcastle and business partner Andrew Adler, 32, of Greenwich, Connecticut, loaned Bitwise Industries approximately $20 million in high-interest hard money loans through their special purpose entity Startop Investments LLC. Hardcastle and Adler split the loans up and sold them to other investors. In doing so, they altered the original loan documents to make it appear that Bitwise was obligated to pay significantly less interest on the loans than was true. They also forged the signature of Bitwise’s Co-CEO, Jake Soberal, on the altered documents. This made the loans appear less risky and therefore more appealing to the investors.
Hardcastle and Adler received tens of thousands of dollars in origination fees for the loans and stood to make millions more in secret profits from the higher, undisclosed interest rates had the loans been fully repaid. Moreover, one of the loans to Bitwise included a secure interest reserve of approximately $700,000. Secure interest reserves are supposed to be disclosed to loan investors and serve to protect investors in the event the borrower does not repay the loan on schedule. The investors were unaware of this reserve.
Hardcastle and Adler then used these reserve funds to make an unrelated investment in another company that they operated without the investors’ authorization, and the money was not available to repay the investors when Bitwise collapsed in May 2023 without repaying the loans. As a result, the investors in the loans lost nearly all of their money.
Adler pleaded guilty to the conspiracy to commit wire fraud when he defrauded investors out of $20 million, and on June 2, 2025, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison.
Bitwise Industries was a startup technology company headquartered in Fresno County. Bitwise had a parent company and several other related companies, which were controlled by Jake Soberal, Irma Olguin, Jr., and a board of directors. Soberal and Olguin, Jr. pleaded guilty to defrauding Bitwise’s investors and lenders, including Startop, out of approximately $115 million. In December 2024, they were sentenced to 11 years and nine years in prison, respectively.
Voyager Pacific Capital Management Ponzi Scheme
Hardcastle was a general partner and chief executive officer at Voyager Pacific Capital Management, a real estate investment firm based in Florida with operations throughout the country that managed assets worth tens of millions of dollars.
According to court documents, between June 2020 and January 2025, Hardcastle and others falsely represented to investors in their Opportunity Fund II that their money would be used to acquire residences, land, and tax liens, among other assets. Instead, Hardcastle and others used the money to pay promised returns to other participants, personal investments, and other improper purchases. They provided fake financial information to the participants that falsely said that the Fund was performing well when, in fact, it was not.
At times, Hardcastle and others at Voyager sold certain properties in the Fund that were in disrepair or underperforming to themselves and did not disclose these sales to the participants. The sales were on paper only and no money changed hands. Hardcastle and others at Voyager made the sales because they did not have sufficient capital to maintain or improve the properties and they were prohibited from incurring debt on the properties based on their agreements with the participants. The sales allowed them to artificially inflate the value of the Fund and the participants’ shares and therefore continue receiving their management fees and other compensation from Voyager.
Hardcastle and others at Voyager agreed with each other to carry out their scheme to defraud and knowingly participated therein. In doing so, they acted with the intent to deceive and cheat the participants out of their money. The participants would not have made their investments had they known how Hardcastle and others at Voyager were using their money. Ultimately, the Fund was acquired by a third party at a discount, and the value of the participants’ shares was diminished.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the investigations in both cases. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Barton and Cody Chapple are prosecuting the cases.
Hardcastle is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston on Sept. 14, 2026. Hardcastle faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge.
