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Robynne Alexander, the real estate developer who offered the state a too-good-to-be-true $21.5 million for the Laconia State School property, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal count of wire fraud in the United States District Court in Concord.

Alexander’s business model of offering eye-popping returns to her investors, as much as 80 percent, was actually part of a scheme to stay ahead of her creditors as her real estate empire crumbled, according to court records.

Alexander now faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced at a later date. She’s already agreed to pay more than $3 million in restitution to her dozens of victims. Many of them gave Alexander their entire retirement savings, thinking she would help them make their fortunes.

Alexander presented herself as a California real estate success story when she moved to New England and taught classes as Real Estate Investor Goddess. Alexander showed people how to make big money on large-scale developments, such as apartment complexes, resorts, and even entire village complexes. In reality, she was a small-time player who flipped a few houses before she started teaching.

But someone did learn something in her classes; Alexander learned which of her students to rope in as investors for her various real estate schemes. She launched several different LLCs starting in 2018 using money from her former students, according to court records.

Under her Raxx‑LeMay, LLC., Alexander got investors to back the purchase and redevelopment of two commercial properties in Manchester. But even with her students, Alexander could only come up with $700,000 of the necessary $2 million for the purchase. Instead of giving the money back with interest to her investors, as was the agreement, Alexander bought the properties with investor money from other projects and high-interest loans. In a classic Ponzi-scheme move, Alexander paid returns to some Raxx-LeMay investors with the investor money from other LLCs she controlled.

After that, things took off for Alexander—but not for her investors. She transferred the Raxx-LeMay properties to another LLC, leaving that business and its investors $850,000 in debt and with no assets.

Alexander’s Elm and Baker, LLC., netted $750,000 in investor money to convert a Manchester property into apartments. Instead, Alexander used more than half that money to repay other, unrelated investors and her own personal loans, ultimately leading to foreclosure on the Elm and Baker property in 2023. 

Her biggest dream, the $21.5 million Laconia State School development, would have been a resort village with retail. It was the winning bid for the property. But for some reason, Alexander couldn’t close the deal. 

Alexander’s winning bid garnered negative attention as people close to the deal began asking questions about her financing. At the same time, one of her failed Manchester developments turned into a lawsuit. Former Gov. Chris Sununu recently said the state gave Alexander multiple opportunities to come up with the money before finally moving on.

“And after three or four extensions, we’re like, ‘Okay, enough is enough.’ And we pulled the plug, rightly so,” Sununu said.

Behind the scenes, Alexander struggled to raise $250,000 from investors for the $21.5 million purchase. At that point, she used $75,000 of that money on herself, including a month-long trip to Paris, Barcelona, Valencia, Nassau, Florida, and New Orleans.

Soon after the Laconia State School deal fell apart, Alexander was under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation. As part of an agreement with New Hampshire authorities, Alexander will repay $96,000 to New Hampshire victims. She also agreed to give up any licensing to sell securities anywhere, and agreed not to be head of any company anywhere ever again.

Sununu gives credit to then-Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas (R-District 4) for protecting the state from getting more deeply involved with Alexander during the Laconia property process.

“Gatsas was one of the councilors who said, ‘We could have a problem here,” Sununu said during a recent radio appearance.

As the Alexander deal dragged out, “Ted was just really smart in terms of what we were potentially walking into, and putting up red flags for us. He really drove the message to get the state to pivot. And it was clearly the right thing to do.”

Disgraced financial advisor Thomas Chadwick agreed to pay more than $5 million last year for unethical investment practices that cost his Granite State customers millions.

But more than a year later, the New London-based businessman has yet to pay a penny of the restitution he owes to the victims of his failed investment firm, according to court records.

“As of the date of this filing, Chadwick has made no payment toward the $5,858,346.71 judgment owed per the Consent Order, and the [Secretary of State’s Securities Regulation] Bureau considers Chadwick to be in default,” Brian Linares, senior staff attorney at the Bureau wrote in a new amended complaint filed recently in the Merrimack Superior Court in Concord.

Chadwick agreed to the consent order in April 2024 after he was accused of investor fraud, losing his mostly elderly clients more than $11 million of their retirement savings. Chadwick’s consent order knocked the victim’s restitution down to $4.8 million, with another $1 million to cover state fines and investigation costs.

Secretary of State David Scanlan’s office, through the Securities Regulation Bureau, is now taking Chadwick back to court over the nonpayment.

Chadwick claimed that he had no assets to make payments when he signed the consent order last year. But the order gives Scanlan’s office the right to ask a judge to impose a collection process on Chadwick.

“The only way for the bureau to enforce an administrative order is through the Superior Court. If the bureau obtains an administrative order to pay back restitution, and the target fails to comply with the order, then the only way to enforce collection is through a court order in Superior Court, and that is what the bureau is doing with Mr. Chadwick,” a bureau representative told NHJournal on Tuesday.

But Chadwick’s attorney, Friedrich Moeckel, is opposed to the court’s intervention. In his objection to the bureau, Moeckel stated that going to court would be counterproductive and expensive for all parties concerned.

“Defendant does not quarrel with plaintiff’s right to use this court to register and enforce the parties’ consent decree. Defendant’s concern is that by amending the complaint in this matter, plaintiff effectively restarts this case. Thus, if the court grants plaintiff’s motion to amend, the next step is defendant’s compulsory answer to the amended complaint. And so on and so forth,” Moeckel wrote.

Chadwick reported having investments in real estate and cryptocurrency, among other assets, which were counted by the bureau last year.

Moeckel did not respond to a request for comment. Merrimack Superior Court Judge Daniel St. Hilaire heard from both sides during a hearing last week, but has yet to issue a ruling. 

Chadwick’s business had more than 100 customers in Vermont and New Hampshire when regulators began investigating. In 2019, Chadwick reportedly began moving his clients into a complex, unsecured debt security known as REML, which utilized capital to issue mortgage loans to real estate owners. 

The fund’s bank, Credit Suisse, warned investors that REML was a potentially volatile asset that should only be bought by people who could afford to lose everything they put into the fund. Chadwick, however, told his many clients that REML was a good bet for retirees, giving them a guaranteed income with low risk, according to court records.

“[S]everal clients stated that Chadwick never told them that they could lose all of their money if they invested in REML. They said that, had they been aware of the risk of total loss, they never would have agreed to invest in REML,” the Bureau’s complaint states.

By March 2020, Chadwick had his clients heavily invested in REML, some with more than 70 percent of their savings in the risky fund. When the bottom dropped out during the COVID-19 financial crash, REML’s share price fell to nearly zero. 

Chadwick wasn’t phased by the multimillion-dollar loss for his clients, according to court records. He wanted them to keep investing.

“Chadwick recommended [in an investor memo] his clients buy back into REML and declared that ‘the risk of not owning the shares has[d] become greater than remaining liquidated,’” the complaint states.

In 2021, Chadwick split from his original investment business, Chadwick and D’Amato, and began working with his clients as an unlicensed financial advisor through Fidelity Brokerage Services, according to court records. By the end of the year, Fidelity had cut ties with Chadwick, but he continued to advise clients. 

According to the complaint, Chadwick then used the Fidelity accounts of his clients to make trades and purchases, like buying and selling cryptocurrency and other securities. Fidelity’s system flagged 27 of the accounts as suspicious due to the trading activity and shut them down, according to court records. That left his clients, many of whom were retirees on fixed incomes, locked out of their own accounts and unable to access their money. 

A group of Chadwick’s former investors filed a complaint this year with the federal Financial Industry Regulatory Authority against Fidelity, accusing the firm of ignoring red flags that allowed Chadwick to operate. The state of Vermont has already paid 21 of Chadwick’s victims a total of $339,000 for their losses through the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation’s Victim Restitution Fund.