Pinocchios Incredible Italian founder arrested
A local businesswoman has been accused of embezzling more than $3 million from at least two dozen investors from 2018 to 2021.
Police arrested 61-year-old Annie Vick — also known as Annie Velazquez or Annie Margaret — on Feb. 1 on suspicion of 10 counts of securities fraud, according to an affidavit for her arrest. Vick founded the Pinocchios chain in northern Colorado — including the Pinocchios Incredible Italian restaurant in Greeley at 905 16th St.
Vick allegedly solicited the investments — though she was not licensed to sell securities — without disclosing the risks involved or the losses she incurred, according to the affidavit. She also used part of the investments she solicited to repay prior investors, as well as to cover restaurant expenses, credit card payments and for personal use.
From August 2018 to 2022, Vick lived in Mead and owned several Pinocchios locations in northern Colorado, as well as a restaurant called Delvickios in Broomfield.
In 2018, Vick started soliciting investments in her personal stock options trading, promising monthly interest payments between 5% and 10%, according to the affidavit. Police say she solicited more than $250,000 of investments — mixing them with her personal funds — before forming AMV Investments in August 2019.
AMV Investments had no documentation describing Vick’s trading returns, trading strategies or associated risks. The only documentation, police said, was a promissory note AMV Investments would send to investors to be signed and sent back, and a one-page Google document noting the start date of investments, principal amount, monthly interest and payments made.
The promissory notes had oneyear terms requiring AMV Investments to make monthly interest payments that ranged from 5% to 10%.
AMV Investments promised to pay back the investor their initial investment after the first year, according to the affidavit.
Once investors signed the promissory note and transferred the funds, police say, the investors had no authority or ability to direct the investments and didn’t know how their money was being invested other than that it was traded in stock options.
Vick registered AMV Investments as a Colorado limited liability company, but police say she didn’t initially open an AMV Investments bank account, instead pooling AMV investors’ funds with her personal brokerage accounts, personal funds and restaurant funds.
In the three months following Vick registering AMV Investments as a limited liability company, she received more than $200,000 from four investors but never opened an AMV Investments brokerage account, police say.
When she finally did, less than 4% of all investment funds were initially transferred to the AMV Investments brokerage account, investigators found.
Instead, Vick had investors wire funds to her various personal and restaurant bank accounts, then she’d transferred the money to either her personal brokerage account or the AMV Investments brokerage account, according to the affidavit. She also had investors write checks to AMV Investments that she would deposit in other accounts.
When soliciting the investments, police said, Vick failed to disclose that her trading strategy involved significant risks by relying on margin trading and uncovered options. She would instead pose as an extremely successful stock options trader with “remarkable ability and extraordinary returns,” according to the affidavit.
In reality, records show Vick’s brokerage accounts suffered aggregate losses of more than $600,000 in 2018 and more than $520,000 in 2020. From October 2019 to May 2020, Vick suffered
losses of $967,000.
By failing to disclose any of her losses, not only did she entice new investors, but she also persuaded people already working with her to re-invest, police say.
In June 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into Vick and AMV Investments.
Vick told the SEC in October 2020 that she was not soliciting any more investments, but investigators say she continued to solicit new investments from existing investors, misrepresenting the nature and status of the investigation. Once the investigation was opened, police say, she directed nearly $1 million of investment funds to her personal and restaurant accounts instead of her brokerage accounts.
From that point, Vick solicited nearly $300,000 of investors’ money that she never invested, according to police. She instead used those funds to make monthly interest payments to other investors, as well as for her restaurant business and personal use.
Police say that at no point was Vick or AMV Investments
licensed to sell securities. Vick was also not licensed as an investment adviser or investment adviser representative, according to the affidavit.
Vick, along with Cecil Velazquez, opened Pinocchios’ Greeley location in June of last year to go along with restaurants of the same name in Longmont and Loveland, though the Loveland location is currently closed for renovations, according to their website.
A second Greeley location — Pinocchios Prime — is slated to open in downtown early next month. Velazquez told a judge at a liquor licensing hearing on Feb. 16 — more than two weeks after Vick’s arrest — that he is the sole owner of Pinocchios Prime as well as the 16th Street location, operating under a franchise agreement with Vick.
Neither Vick nor Velazquez could be reached for comment Tuesday. Several calls to the Greeley Pinocchios during business hours went unanswered.
Vick has a bond hearing set for March 14 in Weld District Court.