The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a complaint against Reign Financial International, LLC; Reign Financial International, Inc, Giorgio Johnson, Gary Mills, Patrick Allen, Berone Capital, LLC, Jeremiah Beguesse, and Fabian Stone.

The complaint was submitted at the Florida Southern District Court on May 7, 2026.

The case concerns a fraudulent investment scheme involving three fraudulent high-yield investment programs perpetrated by Reign, Johnson, Mills, and Allen.

This matter also concerns the misconduct of Berone, Beguesse, and Stone, who misappropriated assets from a hedge fund they managed that held investor funds from at least one of the investment programs.

The complaint alleges that from at least March 2021 through October 2022, Reign, Johnson, and

Mills, individually and by providing substantial assistance to others, engaged in a scheme to defraud at least 31 investors, raising over $26 million through the offer and sale of securities in fraudulent high-yield investment programs purportedly administered by Allen, for the first two programs, and the Reign Defendants for the third program.

Through these programs, Allen and the Reign Defendants purported to invest investor funds and generate extraordinary short-term profits for investors with little to no risk. They promised investors that their principal investments would be secure and returned in a matter of weeks, after which investors would receive weekly payments of significant profits generated by the programs.

In reality, the purported programs did not exist, and millions of dollars of investor funds were misappropriated by the defendants and others instead of remaining secure and returned to investors.

The scheme involved three similar fraudulent high-yield investment programs. Allen, through companies he owned and controlled, administered the first two fraudulent investment programs—the “Compass Program” and “PBL & 5Js Program”—with the Reign Defendants’ substantial assistance.

They enticed investors with promises of outsized short-term profits with little or no risk to their principal, claiming investor funds would be used to source opaque financial instruments involving leverage through European banks. Allen, substantially assisted by the Reign Defendants, promised to keep the funds secure and protected from depletion, return the principal after a few weeks, and pay investors profits generated from the program on a weekly basis.

In reality, Allen did not use investor funds for any legitimate investment program, and, instead, simply stole much of the money for his own personal use and benefit, leading to investor losses of over $6 million. Despite investors’ complaints and repeated requests for information, Allen and the Reign Defendants engaged in various delay tactics and concealed

from investors that their funds had never been invested and, instead, had been misappropriated.

For the third program that was part of this scheme, the Reign Defendants determined to strike out on their own and administer their own high-yield investment program—the “Reign Program”—that was remarkably similar to the Compass and PBL & 5Js Programs.

The Reign Defendants were purportedly going to use Allen’s contacts and bank trading platform to administer the Reign Program. However, they had never been introduced to Allen’s contacts nor knew their identities; none of the investors in Allen’s programs had received any profits (and many never received a return of their principal); and the Reign Defendants had no reasonable basis to believe they could satisfy the terms of the investment they promised. The Reign Defendants secured a $20 million investment but never invested it in any legitimate investment program because it did not exist. Instead, portions of those funds were misappropriated by the Berone Defendants and misappropriated or squandered by the Reign Defendants and others.

Berone, Beguesse, and Stone were involved in two of the fraudulent high-yield investment programs that were part of this scheme—the PBL & 5Js and Reign Programs. Under the agreements governing the two programs, investors’ money was to be held in a hedge fund named the Berone Capital Fund LP that the Berone Defendants managed. The investors’ funds were not to be depleted, used, or spent. However, the Berone Defendants allowed Allen and the Reign

Defendants to misappropriate some of the investor funds.

The Berone Defendants also violated their fiduciary duties and the terms of the Berone Fund governing documents by misappropriating hedge fund assets for their own personal use and benefit, including jewelry, luxury cars, and private jet travel.

The SEC accuses Reign, Johnson, Mills, and Allen of violation of Sections 17(a)(1) and (a)(3) of the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) [15 U.S.C. § 77q(a)(1), (3)], Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) [15 U.S.C. § 78j(b)], and Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) thereunder [17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5(a), (c)], and Reign, Johnson, and Mills of aiding and abetting Allen’s violations of these same provisions.

In addition, the SEC alleges that, as control person over Reign, under Exchange Act Section 20(a) [15 U.S.C. § 78t(a)], Johnson violated these same provisions for Reign’s violations.

Further, the SEC accuses the Berone Defendants of violations of Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (“Advisers Act”) [15 U.S.C. § 80b-6(1), (2)].

The SEC seeks against all Defendants permanent injunctive relief, conduct-based injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and prejudgment interest thereon, and civil penalties, and an officer and director bar against Defendant Johnson.