The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Linh Thuy Le and her husband, Trong Hoang Luu.
The SEC’s complaint, seen by FX News Group, was filed in the Central District Court of California on October 15, 2025.
The civil enforcement action concerns a bid fraud perpetrated primarily against members of the Vietnamese and Latino communities in several states by defendants Le and Luu through their companies Inventis Ventures, LLC and Inventis Ventures Holding, Inc.
The SEC complaint alleges that between March 22, 2022 and November 2023, Le raised at least $26.5 million with Inventis from at least 1,400 people in an unregistered securities offering. The actual amount collected by the defendants and the number of defrauded investors may be even higher due to the fact that many investments and payments have been made in cash.
Le and Inventis lured investors with false promises of guaranteed returns of either 15% per month or at least 360% per year, along with a return of capital after one year if they invested at least $5,000. Le also falsely told investors that Inventis would use their funds to invest in different “emerging projects” in its “investment portfolio,” giving different investors inconsistent descriptions of the use of funds and the source of returns, ranging from “real estate investments” and “health insurance investments” to claims that he had access to an unnamed bank that provided a yield of 40%.
He falsely told many investors that investments were “guaranteed”, “safe” or “insured”.
The SEC alleges that Le’s statements to investors were materially false and misleading because, instead of using investor money to engage in legitimate business activity, Le and Luu embezzled the funds, spending investor money for their own personal gain, paying referral fees and making Ponzi-style distribution payments to previous investors in an effort to maintain the their program.
Additionally, the complaint alleges that Luu, who knew Le was making these false statements to investors, facilitated and furthered the scheme by, among other things, signing more than 95% of the checks issued by Inventis, including 96% of the checks used to make approximately $16.5 million in Ponzi-like payments to individual investors. investors.
Like all Ponzi-like schemes, Inventis eventually collapsed and many of the investors abruptly stopped receiving the promised interest payments and were never repaid their principal investment.
Even then, Le continued to make false and misleading statements to investors claiming that Inventis had to stop payments only because of “bank audits” and “bank compliance issues.”
The SEC is seeking injunctive relief against the defendants, as well as civil monetary penalties.