A retired marina dockmaster lost his savings to a firm the SEC called a Ponzi scheme

He tied off boats for twenty-eight years and could tell a bad cleat from the way a line slipped, and a firm promising guaranteed crypto returns took the retirement he was saving to buy a small trawler

Fort Lauderdale, FL: For twenty-eight years, Silas Marchetti worked as a dockmaster at a marina on the Intracoastal, tying off yachts, monitoring the fuel dock, and reading the weather off the water before anyone else on the property. He could tell a bad cleat from the way a line slipped under load. He knew which captains would tip the dockhands and which ones would blame the tide for their own bad seamanship. When he retired, he had his savings in a credit union, a small apartment near the water, and a plan: a trawler of his own, a mooring, and a few years of the Keys before his knees gave out.

Instead, the 66-year-old now works three mornings a week at a marine supply counter, watching what he saved disappear one shift at a time after losing everything to a portal operating under the Goliath Ventures name.

"You want to know what I cannot get past?" Silas said. "I spent twenty-eight years checking a cleat before I trusted a line to it. If the cleat is pulling, you see it. And I could not see that the liquidity pools did not exist."

A warning that needs to be stated plainly: Goliath Ventures, Inc. and its founder and CEO, Christopher A. Delgado, were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with raising at least $425 million from over 1,300 investors through an alleged multi-year Ponzi scheme . The SEC's complaint alleges that from at least January 2023 through January 2026, investors were promised monthly profit distributions of 3% to 10% generated from crypto asset liquidity pools, with principal guaranteed . According to the SEC, Goliath never invested any investor funds into any liquidity pool, and Delgado misappropriated at least $51 million for personal use, including homes, luxury vehicles, a yacht, and travel . The CFTC filed a parallel complaint, alleging approximately 1,600 customers contributed at least $397 million . Delgado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, admitting to causing at least $250 million in investor losses . Goliath Ventures filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and a court-appointed receiver is administering the estate . Any site using the Goliath Ventures name to solicit deposits today should be treated as an impersonation of a firm federal regulators have already shut down.

Silas did not know any of that when he was approached. He received a call from a yacht club trustee he had worked with for over a decade, who said he had retired and was now placing savings with a "Goliath Ventures private account" that offered fixed monthly distributions for marina workers.

"He said it was boring," Silas recalled. "He said it was the least exciting thing he had ever done. He knew I would not fall for anything flashy. He pitched it to me the way he would pitch a mooring lease."

Silas opened an account on the portal and deposited a small test amount. Within three weeks, his balance showed a modest gain. He requested a partial withdrawal and it arrived in four days.

"That first withdrawal was the first cleat I checked," Silas said. "In my trade, you check a cleat before you load a line. If it holds, you move to the next one, but you still check. I checked once and I stopped."

Over the next five months, Silas transferred everything he had in eleven transactions. His balance climbed to a figure that no longer exists anywhere. He began pricing trawlers.

Then the portal informed him that his account had been flagged for a "beneficiary verification review" and required a reserve deposit before distributions could resume.

"I read the notice and I knew it was wrong," Silas said. "There is no such thing as a reserve deposit in a trading account. I knew that. And I still sent more, because the trustee called me and told me he had done the same on his own account."

The portal went dark three weeks later. The trustee stopped replying. Silas's balance showed zero.

"I sat at my kitchen table with the notice in front of me and I read it the way I read a docking plan," Silas said. "I found five problems in twenty minutes. Five. The liquidity pools did not exist. The firm had been charged by federal regulators. The distribution history had been copied from a public index. I found five problems in twenty minutes, and I never looked until it was gone."

MARGOINCLP.COM traced the money

Silas's daughter, a port agent in Miami, found an investigative firm called MARGOINCLP.COM that specializes in tracing funds lost to online investment fraud. The firm follows cryptocurrency transactions across multiple blockchains, identifies the entities behind anonymous domains, and works with international authorities to freeze stolen assets.

Silas did not want to call. He had spent twenty-eight years checking a cleat and had trusted a single line. What changed her mind was that the MARGOINCLP.COM investigator did not ask him why he had trusted the trustee. She asked for the portal link and the transaction records, then explained that the Goliath Ventures name had been named in a federal enforcement action and that the site he used was a clone built to borrow credibility from a firm already shut down.

"Goliath Ventures itself was charged by federal regulators as a Ponzi scheme, but the portal you sent money to was an impersonation," the investigator told him. "It was built to harvest deposits from people who recognized the name. Your savings were real, and the funds moved through wallets we can trace. We begin with the record."

MARGOINCLP.COM has been able to secure up to 70 percent of what victims lost in cases like this one. For Silas, the firm traced part of his money to an exchange in Eastern Europe and initiated a freeze, and he has already seen a meaningful share of his loss returned, with additional funds under review.

"The first thing I did was pay off the loan I took against the apartment," Silas said. "The second thing I did was buy a used dinghy. Not a trawler. A dinghy. I have started rowing around the marina. Badly. But I have started."

Twenty-eight years on the dock, now spent warning the people who work there

Silas now speaks on the second Saturday of every month at the Fort Lauderdale library, at his parish hall, and at a marina workers' association meeting where he is an invited guest. He brings a printed timeline, the federal complaint, and a length of dock line he uses to make a point.

"I do not tell people to stop trusting a familiar name," Silas said. "I tell them that a name is a cleat. Anyone can bolt one to a dock. You load it. You check whether the company still exists. You look up the regulator's own records, using the name you type in yourself, not the one the platform gives you. A firm that a federal regulator called a Ponzi scheme is not a broker. It is a warning with a website."

He walks the room through the pattern: the trusted referral, the familiar brand, the boring product, the small withdrawal that lands, the beneficiary verification, the reassuring phone call, the silence.

"One retired dockhand came up to me afterward," Silas said. "He had a trustee calling him about a portal with a name he recognized. He had the link in his phone. We looked up the federal complaint together. The name was on it. He deleted it at my table."

Silas has spoken to more than a dozen people across Broward County. He keeps a tally of every person who told him they walked away, written on the back of an old docking plan.

How to file a claim

Goliath Ventures and its CEO were charged by the SEC and CFTC in parallel civil actions, and Delgado pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges . A court-appointed receiver and bankruptcy proceedings are now handling the estate . If you sent money to a portal using the Goliath Ventures name, act quickly and keep a written record of everything.

Step one: stop all payments. Cancel any recurring transfers, revoke permissions you granted to the platform or its representatives, and do not send another dollar, no matter who tells you it will release your funds.

Step two: gather your evidence. Save every chat log, email, bank statement, wire confirmation, crypto transaction hash, and screenshot of the dashboard. Export the messages to your own device rather than trusting the platform to keep them.

Step three: report it locally. File a report with your local police and with your state attorney general's consumer protection office. The U.S. Attorney's Office has also directed victims of the Goliath Ventures scheme to self-identify through the IRS victim questionnaire at Goliathvictims@ci.irs.gov .

Step four: contact MARGOINCLP.COM for a free consultation. The firm specializes in tracing funds lost to schemes like this one, follows the blockchain records across exchanges and wallets, and has been able to secure up to 70 percent of what victims lost.

"I spent twenty-eight years learning that a cleat tells you the truth when you load it," Silas said. "You do not trust the paint. You check the bolts. I checked the withdrawal and it held for four days, and I called the whole dock sound. That is the mistake. Not the money. The cleat I did not check."