Paul Regan claimed to have discovered the investment holy grail of high return at low risk, offering investors the chance to earn 10%, even 15% or more annually for up to 10 years, guaranteed.
That might seem too good to be true—and it was. But Regan pulled from a bag of tricks to rip off his clients. And he recorded many of his phone calls to teach others how to rip people off, too.
Those recordings offer rare access into the inner workings of a fraud and the psychological tactics of a master of deception. They show how Regan made a multipronged assault on clients’ emotions by playing on their vulnerabilities, their need for income and their yearning to believe.
A bear of a man at least 6-foot-2 and approaching 300 pounds, Regan could gently convey empathy.
He told a 71-year-old woman who said she had always worked two jobs: “Not only will you not lose your money, but in recognition of how hard you worked for it, I want you to remember something: Your money’s going to work twice as hard for you as you ever did for it.”
He charmed investors with his sense of humor.
“I have to tell you that there’s risk,” Regan told one client. “But at the end of the day with insurance wrappers and protection, y’know, it’s the same risk that we have of, y’know, being ripped apart by a saber-tooth tiger or, y’know, stepped on by a dinosaur.”
He also commanded an army of dozens of commission-hungry salespeople, including agents with little investing knowledge.
“We’ve laughed about how overwhelming it is to have to deal with this level of ignorance, this level of stupidity,” he told a business associate.
In March, Regan pleaded guilty to three felony fraud charges. Federal prosecutors say Regan, who is 49, and his co-conspirators misappropriated most of the more than $60 million he raised from over 300 investors in two firms, Next Level Holdings and Yield Wealth. Regan’s attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A series of articles in The Wall Street Journal starting in August 2024 raised questions about the high returns the firms promised. The firms started taking down online information about the offerings, including a product promising “Colossal Yields Without the Risk,” and shut down operations over the next few months. By that December, federal and state authorities were investigating.
As Regan put it, once a client was interested and a salesperson needed Regan to “push him over the edge,” the financier would place a call with as little as 20 minutes’ notice. After recording the calls, Regan uploaded the files to a Google Drive folder that he shared as training materials with the insurance agents who sold Next Level and Yield.
The Journal has reviewed nearly 20 recordings of Regan’s sales pitches, as well as videos and screenshots related to his operations. The Journal confirmed the authenticity of several of the recordings with the clients in them.
Again and again, Regan—who was barred for life from the securities industry in 2004 and pleaded guilty to a felony charge of organized fraud in Florida in 2017—spun tall tales about the investments he was selling and his own professional background.
He claimed to run an international gold mining and trading operation. He also told investors he purchased health-insurance policies at discounted prices. Together, he said, those strategies could generate “guaranteed” annual income of 10%, 15% or more. He said those yields were backed by an insurance consortium including Lloyd’s of London.
“What we have,” Regan told one prospect, “are the biggest and strongest and most powerful institutions behind us, the insurance carriers that have been around for hundreds of years that are guaranteeing you that you won’t lose.”
Regan “made no meaningful investments” in precious metals or health-insurance policies, prosecutors said in the indictment. Instead, he and his associates ran a Ponzi scheme, paying earlier clients with money from later investors. Prosecutors also said Regan and his associates forged many insurance documents.
Winning hearts and minds
Psychological experiments have shown that people are more likely to believe someone who is likable, seems authoritative and creates a feeling of belonging to a special community.
On a call in the summer of 2024, an investor said he was worried a product Regan was pitching “could be one of those Bernie Madoff things,” referring to the financier who died in prison after running a multibillion-dollar scam.
During the nearly hourlong call, Regan spoke quickly and confidently, detailing his investment strategy and professional credentials—many of them fabricated—in a soothing voice flecked with humor and references to his faith in God.
When the prospective client, a 75-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran, said he was investing not only for himself but also for an elderly friend with Alzheimer’s, Regan said that was “something that’s sacred.”
“The kind of person that would hear that and then put you in a situation where, y’know, there’s risk, I mean there’s a special kind of hell for that person,” he added.
Later in the call, Regan said, “You touched my heart…God bless.”
The investor forked over $600,000.
On another call, the 71-year-old prospective investor who had worked two jobs told him she had no family and that “nothing was ever given to me.” She said she had been clearing her yard with a chain saw when Regan called. “Amen,” said Regan, who often described himself as a Christian.
“Honestly and truly, this is a blessing for me because having the knowledge of the fact that you need it, y’know, makes it that much sweeter, that much more of a blessing for me, knowing that I can, y’know, come through for you and be your deliverance and give you the peace of mind and give you the, like, easy night’s rest, like melatonin. For me, it’s the greatest gift in the world and it’s a blessing,” he told her.
She said she would invest “a little more than” $150,000.
Conveying confidence
Speaking to people with limited investing experience, Regan emphasized his own. He also made his offerings sound worry-free.
He said government agencies had “approved” his offerings.
“There’s no way this document would be placed before you for your edification,” he said on one call, “unless dozens of people sitting in high places that are overseeing the banking regulations, banking department, insurance department as well as, y’know, the Securities and Exchange Commission, had approved it for public dissemination.”
The SEC says any statement that it has approved a securities offering is a criminal offense.
Regan mixed serious promises with a lighthearted tone. Regan told some prospective clients that his investments had “zero risk” and likened the purported insurance to “a bulletproof vest that you can wake up with and go to sleep with.”
He told investors that not only their principal, but also all income payments through maturity were insured. According to Regan, investors were certain to get their original capital back, but were also assured of receiving every scheduled interest payment over the full term even if one of his offerings went bust at the beginning.
“A default” in the first few years, he said, would “accelerate your return.” As Regan joked on one call, “Some of our investors laugh and say, ‘We hope you guys fail, because, y’know, that would be better for us.’”
The agents
Regan exploited his own sales force’s lack of investing knowledge.
“These people that aren’t sophisticated, including my agents that have, like, some of them 82 IQs, I’m not responsible for what they say,” he said to an associate in late 2024.
Yet that was the way he wanted it. Some of the agents invested their own money in his offerings, totaling several million dollars, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.
Regan and Jonathan Guzman, his sales chief, recruited insurance agents who were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and eager to get out of the hole, said people familiar with the matter. Guzman denies playing that role. Regan’s team dangled commissions that could hit 15%.
They sold the agents lists of potential customers, charging about $1,800 for 20 leads. The lists were filtered to focus on those over 55 with at least $100,000 in assets.
According to audio and video reviewed by the Journal, Regan and Guzman told the agents they didn’t need securities licenses to sell the offerings—a potential violation of federal law. Guzman hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.
The two pushed other questionable practices. A prospective million-dollar client had asked to speak with other investors. On a recorded call reviewed by the Journal, Guzman told agents Regan would pay $250 if they spoke to the client about their own investments in Regan’s offerings without disclosing that they were part of his sales force.
Guzman told the Journal he was repeating what Regan had said about securities licenses and was simply passing along his $250 offer. Regan “acted like everyone could be purchased and he put a price that, y’know, people couldn’t ignore,” Guzman said. “I never did things against the law knowingly with these guys.”
Most of the agents had rarely sold securities. Some didn’t even sell insurance full-time, moonlighting from jobs in real estate or other fields.
Motivated to earn
In August 2022, Anthony Liddle had just been barred from the securities business by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and was awaiting trial on federal fraud charges. Suddenly his phone lit up with texts from Regan, who said he ran a hedge fund and wanted to hire a head of sales.
“I am aware of your FINRA bar/suspension,” said one text, “and I do NOT consider this an impediment in any way. In fact I could care less about it.”
Liddle took the call. He told the Journal he began the conversation by “coming clean,” telling Regan he had cheated his clients.
“That’s exactly why I’m contacting you,” he said Regan responded.
Regan said he wanted people who had been expelled from the securities business because they knew how to sell and were motivated to earn money, according to Liddle. Regan offered a starting salary of $300,000 to $400,000 with up to a $200,000 bonus.
Liddle later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in his fraud case and is serving an eight-year term in federal prison.
In January 2023, Liddle shared the texts and other material from Regan with SEC attorneys. One of Liddle’s emails, reviewed by the Journal, warned the SEC “it looks terribly fishy.”
By late 2024, Regan had misappropriated at least $50 million of the $63 million he raised, the SEC alleged when it filed civil fraud charges against him in September 2025.
It isn’t unusual for investigations to take at least a year, said a person familiar with the agency.
Perks and demands
Once Regan got salespeople on board, he threw in perks to motivate them.
In March 2024, several dozen insurance agents from the U.S. took part in a three-day junket in and around Medellín, Colombia, where Regan lived and worked. The agents fondled gold ingots, listened to financial presentations—and partied.
At a palatial ranch outside Medellín, the agents posed for photographs on a red carpet with the Andes mountains in the distance. Dancers in body paint twirled flaming torches. The festivities lasted at least 12 hours, attendees said, with alcohol flowing freely.
A troupe of local performers enacted boxing and wrestling matches as the crowd cackled. Later, attendees threw some of the performers into the swimming pool.
Working the crowd, Regan wrapped his arm around the agents, calling them “brother.” Fixing his intense, pale-blue eyes on them, he urged them to keep selling. As Regan later said on a conference call, they would “get paid and then get paid some more.”
Behind the scenes, Regan demanded absolute obedience. When an agent called a marketing firm to verify whether it had signed a deal with Yield, Regan was furious, describing him to a business associate as a “waste of human f—ing skin.”
“This is an act of treason, and not only do I want him fired, bro, I want his f—ing head on a platter,” he said.
Regan will be sentenced in August. Although his plea agreement requires him to make full restitution, it isn’t clear how much money, if any, investors will get back.
Write to Jason Zweig at jason.zweig@wsj.com
