Telepeer

Newport Beach executive and insurance agent plead guilty in multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme

March 1, 2025

An Orange County executive and an insurance agent pleaded guilty Friday, Feb. 28 in a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme.

Robert Andrew Lotter, 67, of Newport Beach, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of illegally selling unqualified securities. Co-defendant Charles Albert Major, 76, pleaded to two counts of making an untrue statement or omission in connection with a purchase or sale and a count of unlawfully selling unqualified securities, all felonies.

The two are scheduled to be sentenced April 11.

In court papers filed in 2020, state Department of Insurance investigator Braelyn Velasco said Lotter “fraudulently sold securities to 20 victims by means of omission, misrepresentation, and through the use of a device, scheme, or artifice, Lotter’s victims lost $4,087,811.04.”

From May 2003 to May 2018, Lotter “sold investments in his companies’ eAgency Inc. and Mymobilewatchdog Inc. by the use of misleading marketing materials and tactics that led victims to believe Lotter’s insurance agency was affiliated with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, a state agency that provides retirement pension benefits to California public school educators,” according to Velasco.

Lotter created My Mobile Watchdog, a Newport Beach-based company that helps parents use the app to keep track of web activity on their children’s cellphone.

“Victims responded to the misleading materials with the belief they were requesting a retirement analysis from (the state retirement system),” Velasco alleged.

Accredited investors were then solicited to invest in the defendant’s companies, Velasco said.

Velasco alleged:

Lotter “inappropriately used his agency to access customers’ private financial information to determine if the customer was accredited, in order to solicit the customers’ investments” in the defendants’ companies;
Lotter dangled “unrealistic and inflated financial projects of his companies” to potential investors;
Lotter also “failed to properly disclose to all victims” that investments in his companies were “high risk.”

“At least 10 victims stated there were no such discussions of the risk involved, or that such discussions did not identify the investment as high-risk,” Velasco said. “Some victims were told there was no chance they would lose any of their investment.”

Velasco further said that Lotter and his “companies continued to lull victims throughout the years into believing eAgency Inc. and/or Mymobileatchdog Inc. was making significant progress and investors would see substantial returns soon. Nearly every victim stated they were told investors would see returns within one to two years. The same message was given to victims from the early 2000s until 2018.”

Orange County Register

News Details

Newport Beach executive and insurance agent plead guilty in multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

News

CONTACT INFO

QUICK LINKS

SERVICES

CURRENT NEWS