State orders Tiburon man, Pacific Private to cease investor fundraising
- Kevin Hessel
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
California’s financial regulator has ordered Tiburon resident Mark Hanf and his affiliated Pacific Private entities to stop raising money from investors, finding that they misled investors about material facts while collecting at least $139 million from more than 400 people across five investment funds.
The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation issued a desist and refrain order May 4, barring Hanf, his former chief operating officer Nam Phan and six Pacific Private entities from selling securities in California through untrue or misleading statements. A department spokesperson said the order “essentially prohibits the company from raising money for investors going forward in the manner that they have been doing.”
The order found that Hanf and Phan had withheld three categories of material information from investors: Hanf’s 2007 Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge; a 2014 California Department of Real Estate action that temporarily suspended his broker license for handling client funds improperly; and the department’s 2022 revocation of a lending license held by Pacific Mortgage Capital LLC, an affiliate Hanf co-owned and managed.
The order covers the five funds Pacific Private operated from 2013 through at least November 2025.
It follows the department’s April 6 summary revocation of Pacific Private’s California lending license — which superseded a 30-day suspension issued March 16 — after the company failed to file a required annual report.
The order adds a securities-law dimension to widening legal and regulatory scrutiny of Hanf and his shuttered Novato lending firm. Investors have filed at least six civil lawsuits since January, including a federal RICO action filed April 8 that accused Hanf of routing at least $75 million to entities he owned rather than the secured real-estate loans investors were promised. The Marin County District Attorney’s Consumer Protection Unit, the FBI’s San Francisco division and the Securities and Exchange Commission are all investigating.
Investors can submit information to the FBI at forms.fbi.gov.