A guaranteed 10 percent return every three months is the kind of promise that sounds like a gift and works like a trap. On August 14, 2026, the man who built one of the largest investment frauds in Georgia history was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in federal prison, after taking roughly $380 million from more than 2,000 people who believed that promise. The case is a hard lesson in the exact pitch that should make any saver walk away, especially anyone being nudged to move retirement money.
What Drive Planning actually sold
Todd Burkhalter, 55, founded and ran Drive Planning LLC, an Alpharetta investment firm that marketed a product he called a real-estate loan fund. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, Burkhalter told investors their money would earn a guaranteed 10 percent return every three months, funded by short-term real-estate lending. Prosecutors say those investments did not exist in any form that could produce those returns. Instead, money from new investors was used to pay earlier ones, the defining mechanism of a Ponzi scheme, while Burkhalter spent investor funds on a roughly $2 million yacht, a condo in Cabo San Lucas, and luxury cars.
The court ordered him to pay $233,777,763.82 in restitution, a figure that captures how much of the $380 million is simply gone. Two other Drive Planning executives, David Bradford and Julie Edwards, were sentenced earlier for their roles. For the families involved, restitution on paper rarely means recovery in full, which is why the damage from this kind of fraud lands hardest on the front end, when the decision to invest is made.
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Why the retirement-account pressure is the reddest flag
Prosecutors say Burkhalter did not just wait for money to arrive. He and his team encouraged investors to take early distributions from retirement accounts, drain their children’s college funds, and borrow large sums at high interest to put more in. That pressure to move sheltered money is one of the clearest warning signs in any pitch. A legitimate adviser has no reason to push you to raid a 401(k) or an IRA for a single opportunity, because doing so can trigger taxes, early-withdrawal penalties, and the permanent loss of tax-advantaged growth. When someone frames a retirement account as dead money that should be redeployed into their product right now, that urgency is doing a job, and the job is not helping you.
The three claims that should stop you cold
The Securities and Exchange Commission has spent decades cataloging how these schemes talk, and Drive Planning hit the classic notes. The first is a guaranteed high return with little or no risk. Every real investment carries risk, and returns and risk travel together, so a promise of steady double-digit gains is not a feature, it is a signal. The SEC’s investor education office lists guaranteed returns and overly consistent gains as leading Ponzi hallmarks. The second is returns that arrive like clockwork regardless of what markets are doing, because real markets do not move in a straight line. The third is a story you cannot independently verify, such as loans that are always fully collateralized by assets no outside party ever confirms.
Before handing over money, you can check whether the person and the firm are registered and whether they have a disciplinary history, for free, using the SEC’s background-check tools and the industry’s BrokerCheck database. An adviser who resists that basic step, or who cannot show audited statements and a clear custodian holding your assets, has told you something important.
What to do if you already invested with someone like this
If a return sounds too good and you are already in, act on the paperwork, not the reassurance. Ask for account statements from an independent custodian, not from the promoter, and try to make a modest withdrawal. Schemes like this often stall or delay redemptions right before they collapse, so a slow-walked withdrawal request is itself a warning. If you cannot get your money or straight answers, you can report the firm to the SEC through its tips and complaints portal and to your state securities regulator. Reporting early can matter, because the sooner authorities freeze accounts, the more of the remaining money can be preserved for victims. Burkhalter’s 20-year sentence closes the criminal chapter, but the households that fronted the $380 million are the ones still counting the cost, and the surest protection was recognizing the pitch before the check was written.
What the people who lost money can expect
For victims, a conviction and a restitution order are not the same as getting the money back. Restitution is a court order requiring the defendant to repay, but collection depends on what assets can actually be located and seized, and in a scheme where the money went to a yacht, a foreign condo, and luxury cars, much of it is simply gone. Victims are typically contacted by the prosecuting office or a court-appointed administrator with instructions on how to document their losses and where they stand in line for any recovered funds. Anyone who believes they invested with Drive Planning and has not been reached can look for victim-witness information through the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, and can also file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. The court ordered Burkhalter to pay $233,777,763.82 in restitution, a figure that measures the size of the hole left behind far better than it predicts what any single investor will see returned.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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