A federal judge in Atlanta sentenced Todd Burkhalter, founder of the Georgia financial advisory firm Drive Planning LLC, to the statutory maximum of 20 years in prison on Aug. 14 for running a $380 million Ponzi scheme that consumed the retirement savings of more than 2,000 investors. U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said Burkhalter “ruthlessly encouraged” those investors to deplete retirement accounts, drain their children’s college funds, and borrow at high interest rates to chase guaranteed returns from real estate and tax-lien funds that barely existed. He was also ordered to pay $233,777,763.82 in restitution, covering only about six of every ten dollars investigators say he took.
How Drive Planning Turned Retirement Accounts Into Ponzi Fuel
Between September 2020 and June 2024, Drive Planning marketed two products at the center of the fraud: the “Real Estate Acceleration Loan,” or REAL, and the “Cash Out Real Estate Fund,” or CORE Fund. REAL promised investors a guaranteed 10% return every three months from short-term bridge loans to real estate developers, while the CORE Fund promised 10% every six months, or 22% a year for up to three years, from what Drive Planning called “100% Passive Income from Tax Liens.”
Drive Planning told prospective investors they did not need to be accredited to participate, and company materials actively encouraged people to invest money from retirement accounts, savings, and lines of credit — a pitch aimed squarely at savers who would otherwise be shut out of private, unregistered investment funds. That combination of easy entry and guaranteed returns no legitimate short-term lender could sustain across a four-year run is what let Drive Planning pull in more than 2,000 investors rather than a handful of institutional buyers who might have demanded real due diligence.
To make the loans look real, Burkhalter directed Drive Planning to prepare fraudulent “collateral sheets” listing properties that supposedly backed investor money, some of which did not exist, carrying fictitious valuations. Drive Planning also invoked a well-known Atlanta real estate developer’s name in promissory notes, falsely telling investors their money was secured by that developer’s own holdings, until the developer discovered the unauthorized use and sued Drive Planning and Burkhalter to stop it.
Free retirement updates: Want plain-English help keeping more of your money in retirement? The free Retirement Shield newsletter covers the benefits, deadlines, and money mistakes that cost retirees, a couple times a week. Subscribe free.
Money Meant for Retirement Kept the Ponzi Scheme Running
The fraud was a Ponzi scheme from its earliest days, not a mismanaged business plan that later went bad. Days after Drive Planning received its first $50,000 REAL investment in September 2020, Burkhalter used at least $21,000 of it to repay an earlier Drive Planning investor rather than fund any bridge loan, a pattern regulators say continued for nearly four years as new investor money replaced the returns already promised to earlier ones.
Investor money also financed a personal lifestyle far removed from bridge loans or tax liens: roughly $2 million for a yacht, $2.1 million toward a luxury condo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, $800,000 on vehicles including a 2020 Prevost Marathon motorcoach and two 2024 Land Rovers, and $320,000 on clothing, jewelry, and beauty treatments, on top of millions more spent on chartered private jets and other travel.
FBI Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Marlo Graham called it likely the largest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history, noting that Burkhalter “continued to exploit victims while under federal investigation.” Drive Planning had, in fact, stopped investing any money in the CORE Fund after Dec. 9, 2022, even as it kept collecting at least $4.1 million more from people who believed their contributions were pooled, government-protected, and fully collateralized.
Even after the SEC opened an investigation into Drive Planning around March 2024, Burkhalter and other company leaders kept soliciting tens of millions of dollars more from investors for REAL and the CORE Fund. The SEC sued Drive Planning and Burkhalter on Aug. 14, 2024 — two years to the day before his sentencing — and won a preliminary injunction, an asset freeze, and the appointment of a receiver over the firm, putting the SEC’s estimate of investor losses at $300 million before the DOJ’s later count reached $380 million.
What $233.7 Million in Restitution Does and Doesn’t Fix
U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson, who sentenced Burkhalter, had already sentenced two other Drive Planning executives earlier that same week. Chief Operating Officer David Bradford received four years and three months in prison and was ordered to pay $4,297,878.16 in restitution after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud tied to the CORE Fund, while Chief Administrative Officer Julie Edwards received two years in prison and $630,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to laundering scheme proceeds.
Burkhalter’s own restitution order covers roughly 61% of the approximately $380 million investigators say Drive Planning took from more than 2,000 people, leaving a gap of well over $140 million that the criminal case alone cannot close. Court-appointed receiver Kenneth D. Murena has been recovering and selling Drive Planning’s remaining assets since the SEC’s civil case began, a process that in comparable Ponzi collapses typically returns only a fraction of what victims lost, over years rather than months.
Burkhalter, 55, will serve his 20-year sentence without the possibility of parole, which has been abolished in the federal system, followed by three years of supervised release once he is out. Whether Murena’s receivership can claw back enough from the yacht, the Cabo San Lucas condo, and the fleet of luxury vehicles Burkhalter bought with investor money to meaningfully close that restitution gap remains the open question for the more than 2,000 people who put retirement savings into REAL and the CORE Fund.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
More Financial Reading
