SEC Charges Ex-Assistant at Venture Capital Firms With $1.28M Fraud
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ellen Polcari, a former executive assistant at two venture capital firms under common ownership, with misappropriating about $1.28 million from investors in the firms’ private funds, according to a complaint filed Sept. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
From April 2023 to March 2025, funds advised by the two firms — identified in the complaint only as Venture Capital Firm A and Venture Capital Firm B — collectively raised about $28.67 million from at least 85 investors, largely high-net-worth individuals and family offices, the SEC alleges. Polcari, 38, of Haddonfield, N.J., diverted roughly $1.28 million of that money to her own bank accounts and personal expenses, including credit card and loan payments, online gambling, and retail purchases, according to the complaint.
Polcari’s access traces back to 2014, when she began working as a nanny for the funds’ owner before being hired as an executive assistant at Venture Capital Firm A in November 2015. Her responsibilities there eventually grew to include emailing offering documents and wire instructions to investors, communicating with them about subscription agreements, and wiring money from the funds’ accounts to portfolio companies, according to the complaint. She became an authorized signatory on the firm’s bank accounts that same year and, in April 2023, the sole signatory on a newly opened fund account — on which she falsely identified herself as an 80% owner with “control of the entity,” the SEC alleges. Venture Capital Firm A later amended a regulatory filing to name her as the firm’s “controller.”
When the owner formed Venture Capital Firm B in mid-2024, Polcari filed its formation documents and opened bank accounts for its funds, again falsely representing herself as sole or majority beneficial owner on several of them, the SEC alleges. She had exclusive signatory access to three of the four Firm B fund accounts; by early 2025, her email was the only contact listed on the firm’s website, according to the complaint.
The complaint describes a pattern of Polcari transferring investor money to herself shortly after it arrived. In one instance, a fund received a $250,000 investment on Oct. 1, 2024, and Polcari allegedly transferred $28,000 of it to her own account within a day; by December, her diversions had left that fund short nearly $1 million to cover its designated investment, forcing the owner to backfill the gap from other fund accounts.
The SEC also alleges Polcari fraudulently transferred 2,273 shares of stock belonging to one fund to an entity she owned in August 2024, using the fund owner’s DocuSign signature without his knowledge, then sold most of those shares to a third party for $56,000 that November. She attempted a similar transfer of 15,333 additional shares in January 2025, but the transfer was still pending when the scheme was uncovered that March.
According to the complaint, the firms learned of an SEC investigation in February 2025; the following month, Polcari’s counsel told the firms she had misappropriated a significant amount of money, and the owner terminated her and cut off her account access. Polcari admitted to stealing at least some of the funds in a March 30, 2025, call with the owner, the SEC alleges.
The complaint charges Polcari with violating Sections 17(a)(1) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, along with Rules 10b-5(a) and (c). The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, and a conduct-based injunction, and has demanded a jury trial.
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