Troubled businessman Daryl Heller is set to return to federal bankruptcy court tomorrow, where attorneys for one creditor vying for his assets have recently filed a flurry of legal filings that raise new questions about payments to his children and who created key financial documents.
Though Heller is from East Hempfield Township, in February he filed personal bankruptcy in New Jersey because his most valuable claimed possession, a beach house, was located there.
Heller’s Paramount Management Group operated ATM machines around the East Coast. Last April, it stopped paying out about 2,700 investors, triggering a chain reaction of lawsuits. Heller may owe $800 million or more in total, based on a recent tally of claims.
Paramount was just one of the roughly 140 business entities Heller had registered to his office on 415 N. Prince St. in downtown Lancaster. Court documents show Heller’s former colleagues increasingly worried that Heller’s entangled businesses were a Ponzi scheme — a financial fraud that relies on new infusions of cash to pay off prior obligations.
Lawyers for the Prestige investor funds also have asserted that Paramount operated such a fraudulent scheme. The lawyers have interviewed Heller’s past associates under oath, and have obtained records of Heller’s day-to-day activities, such as text messages and receipts for digital payments.
Here are some recent details from the hundreds of pages of court documents filed in the lead-up to Tuesday’s hearing:
Texts discuss payouts to Heller children
By July 2024, Heller was three months behind on payments to investors.
Text messages between Heller and former Heller Capital Group Chief Operating Officer Aaron Fogleman from last July show that, on a near-daily basis, Heller directed Fogleman to send money to different people or entities.
On July 9, Heller told Fogleman to send $100,000 to Accordo, a limited partnership registered in Heller’s name.
“Okay on Accordo,” Fogleman texted back. “Any specific uses that I should tell them we’re using it for?”
“Accordo needs to put out 50 k to Taite and 50 k to Ethan,” Heller said, referring to his two adult children. “They stopped wiring them a month or two ago.”
Ten minutes later, Fogleman said the $100,000 “made it to Accordo” and would be disbursed to Heller’s children, the court exhibit shows. Heller’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment. Fogleman was not immediately available.
A Lancaster city rowhome purchased by Daryl Heller for his son while Heller was in default for millions of dollars to local people that invested in his Paramount Management Group business on Monday, May 12, 2025. 330 North Lime Street is sandwiched between two other homes.
That transaction may be fraudulent, said Marie T. Reily, a Penn State University law professor who is not involved in this case. “That’s like a big no-no,” she said. “That is a disrespect of the corporate form.”
Previous bankruptcy court documents showed Heller paid $630,000 to his children shortly before he defaulted on his payments to investors. One gift — $240,000 given to Apex Investment Holdings LLC, a recently formed company the legal filing said was owned by Heller’s son Ethan — was later removed from an amended statement.
Reilly said the Prestige attorneys’ use of court exhibits such as this text thread may be part of a strategy to show that Heller doesn’t actually operate his businesses as separate entities. This would show he can’t be trusted, and would make the case that the judge should appoint a U.S. Trustee to take over the bankruptcy.
“That’s to get Heller’s hands off the wheel,” Reilly said. “So the fraud story, and the incompetence, dishonesty, this is all about setting up the need for a trustee.”
Who signed the letter?
A deposition with former Paramount Management Group Chief Financial Officer Dennis Ream offers another example of this, Reilly said.
In the deposition, Prestige attorney Joshua Voss asked Ream whether he remembered signing a Dec. 13, 2023 letter to a prospective lender, Zulfe Ali at Velerity Group.
Ream told Voss he had no memory of the letter.
LNP | LancasterOnline obtained a copy of the letter, written on Paramount Management Group letterhead.
The letter states that it “is to provide verification that I have reviewed and accordingly confirm the operational revenue generated by ATMs… is adequate to consistently support the preferred monthly distribution to the Prestige Funds based on income generated by ATMs.”
The letter was signed by Dennis Ream. It is unclear whether the signature was forged.
Former Paramount Management Group CFO Dennis Ream.
“I’m not presently aware of who would have written it or why,” Ream said under oath.
Reilly described the confusion over the letter shows a potential “failure of internal control” at the company.
“The letter purports to be on their letterhead,” she said. “It makes this statement, which the CFO is now disavowing. This now raises the issue of internal control. Is this CFO operating with sufficient independence?”
FULL COVERAGE:What to know about Daryl Heller, his businesses, lawsuits and bankruptcy [roundup]
In another deposition filed with the court, Former Heller Capital Group Chief Financial Officer Barry Rynearson said he had no memory of a document with his signature on it.
“It is odd that, again, I’m signing off on the document,” Rynearson said in the deposition. “It is very odd.” He added that it was not routine for him to release management reports or put his signature on them.
Issues before the judge
Five main issues are at play in Heller’s bankruptcy, presided over by Judge Jerrold N. Poslusny, Jr.
Poslusny is set to decide whether to accept a settlement agreement proposed by Heller and one of his creditors, Orrstown Bank.
Heller also supports a settlement agreement with Deerfield Capital, a lender that says Heller owes more than $8.7 million for a short-term loan last April that he failed to pay back.
Another group that sued Heller, the Prestige Funds, opposes the Deerfield settlement.
Heller’s team has filed a motion to reject most of Prestige’s claims — amove that would severely limit the investor funds’ ability to recoup their losses.
And the judge will decide whether to appoint a trustee, a move that Reilly said would be notable.
“It may seem like it happens more than it does, because when it happens, it’s in the news. Because it is an extraordinary event.”
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