Richmond Capital Group Lawsuit: 7 Things to Do in the First 72 Hours

This File Has More Public Record Behind It Than Almost Any Other

If your advance came from Richmond Capital Group, Ram Capital Funding or Viceroy Capital Funding, you are in an unusual position, and it is unusual in your favor. Most merchants defending a collection case are arguing about a contract nobody has ever examined. You are holding paper that a New York judge examined at length in a proceeding brought by the Attorney General under Executive Law §63(12), Index No. 451368/2020, decided September 15, 2023 by Justice Andrew Borrok in the Commercial Division. The record in that case included over 140 sample advance agreements, each of which the court noted contained materially the same terms as the others.

That does not mean your case is won and we are not going to tell you it is. The Appellate Division, First Department, modified the resulting judgment on February 19, 2026, and the money portion of it no longer stands. What it does mean is that the reconciliation history, the payment structure and the confession-of-judgment practice associated with this family of companies were examined in a written decision you can read, and that several parties connected to it are under orders that restrict what they may do next. The seven steps below are ordered so the first three days produce answers rather than anxiety.

1. Ask Whether They May Collect at All

Start with authority rather than amount. Under a stipulated final order announced June 6, 2022 in the Federal Trade Commission’s case, RCG Advances, LLC, formerly Richmond Capital Group, and Robert Giardina were permanently banned from the business financing and debt collection industries, were required to vacate judgments entered against former customers and release liens on customer property, and were subject to more than $2.7 million in monetary terms. A lifetime ban on debt collection is not a technicality. It is a live federal court order, and it means a letter from a barred party is a compliance problem before it is a negotiation.

New York added its own restrictions a year later. The September 15, 2023 decision and order in the Attorney General’s proceeding permanently enjoined the respondents from the practices described in the amended petition and directed them to cease all collection of payment or other monies related to the advance agreements. The same order required them to apply for vacatur of the confessions of judgment they had filed and of the judgments issued on those filings, to file the papers necessary to terminate the related liens and security interests, and directed marshals and sheriffs holding executions under those judgments to stay from executing or collecting on them.

So the first question you ask, in writing, is simple: who is this entity, and what is its relationship to the respondents in those two cases. A servicer, an assignee or a purchaser of the portfolio may or may not stand in the shoes of a barred party, and that answer is fact specific rather than obvious. But you should never assume that a letter arriving in 2026 on a 2018 advance carries authority just because it carries a balance. Our page on funders with documented enforcement records sets out which orders reached which parties.

2. Pin Down Which Company Wrote Your Paper

The three names travel together and they are not interchangeable on your documents. Richmond Capital Group LLC, Ram Capital Funding LLC and Viceroy Capital Funding are separate entities, and the September 2023 decision addressed advances associated with them along with the individuals the Attorney General named. Pull your executed agreement and copy the funding entity exactly as it appears, including the LLC and any d/b/a. Then set it beside the name on the daily bank debit, the secured party on any UCC-1 filed against your company, and the plaintiff on any summons you have received.

Mismatches among those four are the norm rather than the exception in this family of files, and each one is a separate question. A different name on the debit can mean a servicer, a processor, or an affiliate. A different secured party on the financing statement can mean an assignment that was never disclosed to you. A different plaintiff on the summons is a standing question that belongs in the answer. None of those are fatal on their own, and none of them should be waived by silence either.

Then note the dates. The Attorney General’s petition in the New York proceeding was filed June 10, 2020, and the court observed that claims appeared timely as of June 10, 2014 given the six-year period. Your own agreement’s date matters for a different reason: it tells you which version of the paper you have, whether a confession of judgment was part of the package, and whether the deal predates the August 30, 2019 amendment to C.P.L.R. §3218 that closed New York courts to confessions against defendants who did not reside in the county of filing.

3. Calendar the Answer, Then Serve the Venue Demand

Two clocks run at once in a New York collection case and merchants routinely miss the second one. An answer is due 20 days after service of the pleading it responds to under C.P.L.R. §3012(a), and 30 days under §3012(c) where the papers went to a state official authorized to receive service for you or reached you by any means other than personal delivery inside the state. In federal court it is 21 days under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(a)(1)(A)(i). Calendar it the day the papers arrive, and note which subsection you counted under so counsel is not reconstructing it later.

The venue clock is tighter and less forgiving. Under C.P.L.R. §511(a) your window to object on improper-venue grounds closes at the answer, because the demand has to go out either before the answer or together with it. Under §511(b), you serve a written demand naming the county you say is proper, and you may move to change the place of trial within fifteen days after service of that demand, unless the plaintiff serves a written consent within five days. Miss the demand and you are left with discretionary relief under §510, where the burden is materially heavier and the outcome much less predictable.

Improper venue is not a jurisdictional defect and it will not get a case dismissed, so treat it as a location fight rather than an exit. It still matters. A case moved from a distant county to the one where your business actually sits changes your cost of appearing, your counsel options, and often the pace of the docket. Note also that 22 NYCRR 202.70(a) sets Commercial Division thresholds that differ by county, at $150,000 in Kings and $500,000 in New York County, so the amount demanded can decide which part hears it.

4. Deal With Any Confession of Judgment Immediately

Confessions of judgment are central to this family of files, and the September 2023 order treated them as such: it directed the respondents to apply for vacatur of the confessions they had filed and of the judgments entered on them, and it stayed marshals and sheriffs from executing on those judgments. If a judgment exists against your company or against you personally, that fact changes your exposure this week rather than this year, because a docketed money judgment supports a restraining notice under C.P.L.R. §5222(b), which the creditor’s attorney can issue and which lets a garnishee hold up to twice the amount due.

The statute itself contains three separate limits that are worth checking against the affidavit in your file. Under C.P.L.R. §3218(a)(1) the affidavit must state the county where the defendant resides. Under §3218(b) it may be filed only with the clerk of the county where the affidavit said the defendant resided when it was executed, or where the defendant resided at filing, and only within three years after the affidavit was executed. And no judgment by confession may be entered after the defendant’s death. Those limits came into their current form through the amendment signed August 30, 2019, chapter 214 of the Laws of 2019.

If a judgment was entered without your knowledge, two different routes exist and the better one is often the less familiar. C.P.L.R. §5015(a)(1) requires a reasonable excuse and a meritorious defense within one year of service of the judgment with notice of entry. C.P.L.R. §317 applies where you were served other than by personal delivery and did not personally receive notice in time to defend, allows a motion within one year of learning of entry and up to five years after entry, and does not require any excuse for the default. Search the judgment index under both your entity name and your own name before you assume neither applies.

5. Read Your Clause Against What the Court Found

The September 2023 decision is the most detailed judicial account of reconciliation practice in this industry, and you can hold your own contract up against it. The court found that although the agreements provided for mandatory reconciliation of the daily amounts collected against the receivables merchants actually received, once bank statements were delivered, this “was a total sham.” It recorded that the respondents “either admit that mandatory reconciliation never occurred or invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,” and that the business records of the payment processor, Actum Processing LLC, confirmed it never occurred.

The court also rejected the fallback argument that a permissive reconciliation on request cured the problem, noting the absence of any example where it actually happened. It described daily sweeps reflecting fixed constant repayment over a fixed term rather than any purported amount of receivables purchased. On the arithmetic, it computed rates on three sample agreements: a $20,000 advance with $9,980 in interest over 50 days at 250%, the same figures over 75 days at 169%, and a $10,000 advance with $9,900 in interest over 9.95 days at 2,496%. It held the agreements criminally usurious and therefore void, applying the Court of Appeals rule from Adar Bays v. GeneSYS ID, 37 N.Y.3d 320 (2021).

Your job in the first 72 hours is not to argue that holding. It is to find out how closely your document and your payment history resemble what the court described. Copy your reconciliation paragraph into a document and mark three things: the verb, the frequency, and who decides what documentation is sufficient. Then compute the effective annual rate from your own statements using the amount actually funded, the total actually collected, and the real number of days. If the two exercises land near what the court described, you are in a materially stronger position than the letter in your hand suggests.

6. Build the Payment File the Way the State Did

The Attorney General did not win the liability question with argument, it won with records. The decision rests on sample agreements, processor data, testimony and admissions. You can assemble a smaller version of the same thing for your own account in an afternoon, and it is the single most useful thing you can do before anyone talks numbers. Start with 24 to 36 months of bank statements as downloaded PDFs, then the complete debit history with dates and amounts, then your merchant processor’s statements, kept separately because they show the receipts side of the same story.

Add the paper: the executed agreement with every addendum and appendix, the security agreement, the guaranty, the ACH authorization, and any confession of judgment affidavit with the notarization page. Then hunt for correspondence. Every email, portal message or text in which you asked about the daily amount, sent bank statements, or asked for the payment to be adjusted belongs in this file, together with whatever came back. Those exchanges are worth more than any of the contract analysis, because they show the clause operating or failing to operate in your specific relationship.

One practical warning about timing. Bank portals commonly hold statements for a limited window, closed accounts get purged, and processors deactivate logins on inactive merchants. If your relationship ended two years ago, some of this material has a shelf life measured in months. Pull it now even if you have not decided what you are doing, and store it somewhere that is not the email account you have been meaning to close.

7. Three Moves to Avoid While the Remand Is Pending

Do not assume the money judgment is still standing, and do not let anyone tell you it is. On February 19, 2026 the Appellate Division, First Department unanimously modified the judgment on the law to vacate its monetary aspect and remanded for further proceedings, otherwise affirming. The reasoning was that the People had made no attempt to exclude repayments of principal from the calculation, and disgorgement was unavailable on that record. Liability under Executive Law §63(12) was left intact. Anyone quoting a $77 million judgment as final has not read the decision, and that misunderstanding cuts both ways in a negotiation.

Do not wait for a restitution check before you deal with your own file. A remand for recalculation is a proceeding with its own schedule, and nothing about it stops a collector, a servicer or an assignee from pursuing you in the meantime. Your answer deadline runs on the ordinary calendar. Whatever restitution ultimately gets computed is a separate track from the collection matter in front of you, and treating them as one is how merchants let a default judgment get entered while they wait for news.

Do not sign a new stipulation, forbearance or affidavit in the first week. On this paper more than most, a fresh acknowledgment of the balance is dangerous, because it can restate as a new obligation the very agreement a court has already examined. If you need time, ask for an extension of the answer date in writing without discussing the merits, your revenue or your assets. There will be a moment to sign something. It is after counsel has read the agreement, not before.

Who Should You Call? Our Top-Rated Business Debt Firms

One firm on this list works the entire lifecycle of a business debt file, from stopping the daily debits through attorney-led negotiation, UCC lien removal, and a signed release. The other two cover broader debt categories that often sit alongside the advances. Choose accordingly.