They Called Them Dead Loans. They Sold Them as Alive.

On Tuesday, the SEC filed fraud charges against Daniel Chu, Jerome Kollar, and Ameryn Seibold — former CEO, CFO, and senior director of finance at Tricolor Holdings, the subprime auto lender that collapsed into bankruptcy in September 2025.

The charge: from at least 2020 through the bankruptcy, Tricolor raised more than $1.9 billion through asset-backed security offerings — while allegedly pledging the same auto loan receivables as collateral to multiple ABS pools and lenders at once. Same collateral, sold twice. Sometimes more.

📁 Per the SEC’s complaint, Chu and other Tricolor executives had a name for the loans borrowers had stopped paying on: “dead loans.” Internally, dead. In filings to investors, the same loans were reported as current, performing collateral.

💸 Dead to the people counting the money. Current to the people raising it. The SEC has a word for that gap. The word is fraud.

$1.9 billion raised on paper. Company: bankrupt. Two of three executives — Kollar and Seibold — have already pleaded guilty in the parallel criminal case and are cooperating with the government. Chu has pleaded not guilty.

Sonny has seen a lot of double-pledged collateral in twenty-five years. He has rarely seen it come with its own internal nickname. Womp womp. 🏛️