Evidence records

documentedSynapse Financial Technologies, Inc. is a Delaware corporation. Its Chapter 11 docket gives employer identification number 46-5396710 and an address at 21255 Burbank Boulevard, Suite 120, Woodland Hills, California; the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) describes Woodland Hills as its principal place of business. ^{1 2}

documentedA 2021 civil complaint filed by the landlord of Synapse's former San Francisco office describes Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. as a Delaware corporation registered with the California Secretary of State as a foreign stock corporation, doing business as SynapseFi, SynapsePay, Synapse Investment Advisors, LLC and TN Synabot Advisors LLC. ³

qualification

The plaintiff's description in a pleading; the California registration and the trade names are not confirmed by a retained registry record.

documentedAccording to the company's first-day bankruptcy filing of April 22, 2024, Sankaet Pathak founded the business in 2014 as Synapse Payments LLC, and it changed its name to Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. in 2016 when it converted to a corporation. A consent order of the New Hampshire Banking Department (No. 16-041) likewise refers to Synapse Payments LLC as now known as Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc., doing business as SynapseFi. ^{4 5}

documentedSEC EDGAR lists Synapse Payments, LLC under Central Index Key 0001638446 as a Tennessee entity with business and mailing addresses at 6745 Lenox Center Ct., Suite 300, Memphis. Its only filing is a Form D notice of an exempt offering of securities filed on April 1, 2015. ⁶

documentedThe 2015 Form D describes Synapse Payments, LLC as a Tennessee limited liability company organised in 2014 and lists four related persons: Sankaet Pathak, marked as executive officer, director and promoter and described as president and member of the member-managed LLC, and Bryan Keltner, Jeffrey Webb and Douglas Marchant, each marked as a director and described as a member. It reports $700,000 of equity sold to ten investors, two of them not accredited, with the first sale on March 16, 2015. ⁷

documentedIn its bankruptcy filings the company described itself as a non-bank technology company whose software allowed financial technology platforms (fintechs) to offer the products of partner banks and other financial institutions to their own customers, called end users; it called itself one of the first, if not the first, to pioneer a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform. The same filing stated that end users were customers of the fintechs and the partner institutions, not of the debtor, and that the debtor was not in the flow of funds and did not receive funds from end users. ^{8 4}

documentedAccording to the debtor, as of January 2024 it had service contracts with more than 20 partner financial institutions, directly or indirectly for sweep networks, and with 100 fintechs, and about 10 million end users used its platform; at the petition date it engaged about 89 employees and contractors in the United States and about 19 people abroad through a third-party employer service. ⁴

documentedAnnouncing its Series A financing in September 2018, the company (then styled SynapseFI) stated that since its founding in 2014 it had processed more than $10 billion in transactions for more than 1.5 million end users and provided white-labelled services as APIs to more than 100 startups and financial services firms, including payment processing, deposit accounts, debit and credit card issuance, custodial accounts and crypto wallets. ⁹

documentedWashington's business registry recorded Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. under UBI 604698641 as a foreign profit corporation of Delaware, with the date January 15, 2021 in its incorporation-date field, an address at 101 2nd St, Suite 1500, San Francisco, National Registered Agents, Inc. as registered agent and a contact address on the synapsefi.com domain; its officers were listed as Michael Rasic and Sankaet Pathak, without titles. The last annual report was filed on January 11, 2023, and a statement of termination was filed on May 3, 2024. ^{10 11}

documentedA corporate-data aggregator lists the Delaware corporation as company number 6083706, with National Registered Agents, Inc. as agent in Dover, and shows foreign-registration branches of that company in Utah, Arizona, Washington (604698641), Illinois and Tennessee (000858713). The Washington and Tennessee registrations carry Synapse's San Francisco address. ^{12 13}

documentedTennessee's record of the foreign registration (000858713), shown as a branch of Delaware company 6083706, has the status Inactive Revoked (Administrative); its most recent filing listed is the 2022 annual report, filed on May 1, 2023. ¹³

documentedIn April 2024 the debtor stated in court that it wholly owned two subsidiaries, Synapse Credit LLC and Synapse Brokerage LLC, and that Synapse Brokerage was a registered broker-dealer and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). ⁸

documentedSynapse Brokerage LLC was formed in Delaware on January 15, 2004 and had been registered with FINRA since March 2006 under earlier names: FINRA refers to it as formerly known as MVP Global Trading, LLC, and its BrokerCheck report lists the other name MVP Financial, used in California, Florida and New York. According to FINRA, Synapse Financial Technologies acquired the firm in July 2020 and the firm conducted no business after the acquisition until September 2023. BrokerCheck identifies the firm by CRD number 137662 and SEC file number 8-67105. ^{14 15}

documentedBefore Synapse acquired it, the firm, then MVP Financial, LLC, had its FINRA membership suspended on April 10, 2017 after failing to file its 2016 annual audit report; the suspension was lifted on May 8, 2017. ¹⁴

documentedSynapse Brokerage's BrokerCheck report reproduces Form BD ownership schedules that list Synapse Financial Technologies Inc. as a domestic entity holding the position of equity owner with 75% or more since June 2020, and list Sankaet Pathak as an indirect owner holding 25% but less than 50% through Synapse Financial Technologies Inc., with his relationship to that direct owner given as chief executive officer, established December 2019. ¹⁴

qualification

The schedules give ownership bands, not exact percentages, and the report does not date Pathak's holding beyond the stated relationship date.

documentedBrokerCheck and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) give Synapse Brokerage's principal office as 10233 South Parker Road, Suite 300, Office 313, Parker, Colorado; DFPI describes the firm as a Delaware limited liability company and a subsidiary of Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. ^{14 16}

documentedSynapse Credit LLC, doing business as Synapse (NMLS 1971454), is a Delaware limited liability company whose main office was at 101 Second Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco; the Connecticut Department of Banking had licensed it as a small loan lender since September 15, 2020. Washington registered it as a foreign limited liability company (UBI 604595480) on March 26, 2020, with Corporation Service Company as agent and Sankaet Pathak and Michael Rasic as officers; that registration was terminated by a statement filed on December 3, 2024. ^{17 18 10 19}

documentedAccording to the debtor, it established Synapse Credit around 2019 to hold state lending licences and offer loans to the end users of fintechs it worked with; the loans were typically secured by restricted cash or reserves for their full amount. Synapse Credit had no employees, and its arrangement with the debtor was set out in an Intercompany Service and Expense Sharing Agreement. ⁴

documentedThe Chapter 11 trustee reported that from 2014 Synapse opened demand deposit accounts (DDAs) at certain banks on behalf of about 100 fintech platforms and their end users; that from 2020 it developed a cash management program with its subsidiary Synapse Brokerage LLC, opening cash management accounts at banks for fintech platforms and their end users; and that it offered secured loans to the platforms' end users through its subsidiary Synapse Credit LLC. ²⁰

documentedThe trustee also reported, citing Pathak's sworn testimony at the creditors' meeting, that Synapse Brokerage, a fully owned subsidiary founded to establish cash management and money market account programs, had not established those programs and had deployed only a sweep network at American Deposit Management Company (ADMC), used to enlarge the FDIC insurance coverage available to depositors and to earn interest that was distributed among Synapse, the fintech platforms and end users under their agreements. ^{20 21}

documentedSynapse Money LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, was registered in Washington as a foreign LLC (UBI 604516460) on November 14, 2019 at 101 2nd St, Suite 1500, San Francisco, the address then also recorded for Synapse and Synapse Credit, with Corporation Service Company as agent; the registration was withdrawn on January 5, 2021. The record names no officers or owner. ^{22 18 23}

qualification

The shared address and name are the only documented link to Synapse; no retained record establishes who owned Synapse Money LLC.

documentedThe Chapter 11 trustee reported that Synapse often used several partner banks for different functions of the same fintech partner, so that an end user's deposits might be held at one bank while withdrawals through the same platform were processed from an account at another bank; the trustee said this model made it both essential and difficult to reconcile transactions and to ensure that each end user received the correct amount. The trustee defined an FBO account as a pooled custodial account that lets a company manage funds for the benefit of its users without owning the account. ⁵

documentedSynapse's master services agreement with a platform client, filed with the SEC in 2018 as an exhibit to the client's Form 8-K and signed by Sankaet Pathak as Founder & CEO on October 23, 2018, states that all bank services are provided to the platform directly by Evolve Bank & Trust or a successor institution designated by Synapse; that Synapse's APIs let the platform communicate its requests to the bank while Synapse helps the platform and the bank manage risk and compliance; and that the platform authorises Synapse to act on its behalf in transmitting financial information and requests. The agreement defines sub-accounts within an FBO deposit account held in the platform's name for the benefit of its users. ⁶

documentedAccording to the CFPB, Synapse signed a Bank Services Agreement with Evolve Bank & Trust on or about April 18, 2017 and a Master Bank Services Agreement on or about September 23, 2022; in 2017 Evolve was Synapse's only partner bank, and at least until the summer of 2023 Synapse gave consumers who opened accounts through fintech platforms a deposit account agreement on Evolve's behalf. ²

documentedA 2024 trade-press report identifies the first version of a Synapse/Evolve deposit agreement as dated September 7, 2017, and a 2025 business-press report states that Synapse and Evolve began working together in 2017, when Synapse's deposits had grown into the millions of dollars and it was looking for more banking partners. ^{7 8}

documentedThe trustee reported that Synapse's 2021 contract with American Bank, its 2022 contract with Evolve and its 2022 contract with Lineage Bank include clauses stating that Synapse has no right to or interest in funds deposited in an end user's account, and concluded that funds in the end users' DDA and FBO accounts are not property of the bankruptcy estate. At the continued creditors' meeting on June 10, 2024, Pathak and general counsel Tracey Guerin testified under oath that all funds in Synapse-related DDA and FBO accounts at the partner banks belonged to end users; the exception they identified was Synapse's own operating money, deposited before the bankruptcy at Evolve in accounts within Synapse's ecosystem, so that Evolve held Synapse property in an FBO account on behalf of Synapse as an end user. ⁹

documentedBy the time of the bankruptcy, according to the trustee, most end-user funds were held in omnibus FBO accounts and the rest in DDAs across four partner banks: American Bank, AMG National Trust, Evolve Bank & Trust and Lineage Bank. ⁹

documentedThe trustee was informed that American Bank held brokered sweep deposits from Synapse Brokerage and issued debit cards for five Synapse fintech partners, without taking part in payment processing or lending; at American Bank's request Synapse and the bank had begun a wind-down plan before the bankruptcy, and by May 17, 2024 the bank held less than $50,000 of sweep deposits. ⁵

documentedAMG National Trust began accepting brokered sweep deposits from Synapse Brokerage in August 2023, according to the trustee; Synapse Brokerage opened deposit accounts at AMG in its own name and FBO accounts for its fintech partners and their end users, and from February 2024 AMG also processed ACH and wire transactions for four of Synapse Brokerage's fintech partners. AMG held no accounts for Synapse itself and had no official relationship with any fintech partner or end user; Synapse Brokerage was the custodian of record and processed and recorded all end-user transactions. ⁵

documentedThe trustee was informed that Evolve provided banking services, including DDA accounts, to Synapse Financial Technologies and payment processing services for Synapse Brokerage. ⁵

documentedLineage Bank provided ACH and wire transfer processing for Synapse as an originating depository financial institution under a master services agreement, according to the trustee. Lineage told the trustee that it never maintained accounts for end users or contracted with them directly, that it had only one account with a fintech platform, and that it was not a program bank or custodian for Synapse Brokerage. The CFPB likewise describes Lineage as mainly an originating bank that processed ACH and wire transfers for cash-management end users on Synapse's instructions. ^{5 2}

documentedThe partner banks told the trustee that the funds they held were FBO funds for the benefit of Synapse or of Synapse Brokerage and its end users: AMG held FBO accounts in Synapse Brokerage's name; Evolve held FBO accounts in Synapse's name, where the DDA funds sat, and in Synapse Brokerage's name; and Lineage held an FBO account designated for the benefit of Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc., most of whose funds belonged to brokerage-program end users. Over several months Synapse Brokerage moved about $650 million from Evolve to AMG and other banks while migrating fintech partners and end users to the brokerage, and continued to direct cash between banks as part of its sweep program. ⁵

documentedThe trustee noted that the banks holding Synapse-related funds were supervised by federal banking agencies (Evolve by the Federal Reserve, Lineage by the FDIC, and AMG and American Bank by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), that the SEC and FINRA regulate Synapse Brokerage, and that Synapse itself was not directly regulated by the Federal Reserve, the FDIC or the OCC. On June 20, 2024 the trustee wrote to the heads of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the OCC, the SEC and FINRA asking them to make consumer-protection resources available to end users. ¹⁰

documentedAsked why affected customers could not claim deposit insurance, a bank-regulatory consultant quoted in the trade press in May 2024 explained that the customers' funds were either pooled in shared accounts at Evolve or held in sweep accounts arranged through Synapse Brokerage, that fintechs are not banks and are not insured by the FDIC, and that because none of the partner banks had failed the FDIC could not intervene or pay the affected customers. ¹¹

documentedOn July 1, 2024 the Senate Banking Committee majority announced a letter from Senators Sherrod Brown, Ron Wyden, Tammy Baldwin and John Fetterman to Synapse's major investors and principal bank and fintech partners: former CEO Sankaet Pathak; the investors Andreessen Horowitz, Core Innovation Capital and Trinity Ventures; the banks American Bank, AMG National Trust, Evolve Bank & Trust and Lineage Bank; and the fintechs Copper, Juno, Mercury, Yieldstreet and Yotta. ¹²

documentedThe trustee reported meeting many of Synapse's fintech partners and their counsel, including Changed Inc., Copper, Gig Wage, Grabr, Gravy, IDT, Juno, Latitud, Mercury, Sunny Day Fund, TClub (d/b/a Abound), Yieldstreet and Yotta. ⁹

documentedCopper, a fintech for teenagers and families operated by NEXT Financial Inc. of Seattle, described SynapseFi in its terms of use (as updated on January 14, 2021) as its backend software provider and a partner of Evolve Bank & Trust, the two together being Copper's 'Bank Partner', and said that SynapseFi's API and its relationship with Evolve enabled Copper to offer banking services. Copper-branded debit cards were issued by Evolve. ^{13 11}

documentedIn May 2024 Copper abruptly closed its bank deposit accounts and debit card services. In a letter to customers on May 12, 2024, co-founder and chief executive Eddie Behringer said the banking middleware service Copper used was sunsetting its service imminently; Copper later said it was coordinating with AMG National Trust and Synapse to return customers' money, while some customers could not yet access their funds. ¹¹

documentedDave Inc., another fintech, stated in its annual report for 2024 that the Synapse bankruptcy had for a number of months affected the ability of customers of fintechs that used Synapse to access funds placed at Synapse's partner banks, including Evolve, and that Dave itself was not directly affected. ¹⁴

documentedAccording to a 2025 business-press report, Pathak built the Evolve partnership in part through a rapport with Evolve's chairman, Scot Lenoir; both men attended the University of Memphis, Lenoir three decades before Pathak. ¹

documentedOn September 25, 2023 Evolve sent Synapse a notice of material breach and an increase in its required reserve balance. According to Synapse's court filing, the notice cited a failure to fully fund Evolve's FBO accounts, demanded a $50 million reserve and said Evolve would withhold all remaining compensation due to Synapse, which ultimately exceeded $43 million; a 2025 business-press report, citing court filings, put the withheld monthly payments at more than $40 million. ^{6 5 1}

qualification

The amounts come from Synapse's filing and a press report of court filings; the notice itself is not retained.

documentedThe asset purchase agreement Synapse signed in April 2024 refers to an 'Evolve Agreement' and to a letter agreement between Synapse and Evolve dated October 1, 2023, and made Evolve's written consent to the sale, including the assignment of the Evolve Agreement, a condition of closing. ⁷

documentedWhen Synapse filed for bankruptcy on April 22, 2024 it said it had reached a settlement with Evolve under which the bank had agreed to pay $2 million to the estate, and court approval of the settlement and mutual release with Evolve was a condition of the TabaPay asset sale. At a hearing on May 9, 2024 Synapse reported that the settlement had not been consummated because of disputes over Evolve funding a settlement payment, and the buyer said it would not proceed with the sale without it. ^{11 7 12}

documentedMercury Technologies, Inc., a banking-services startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, was Synapse's largest client. Former employees told the business press in 2025 that Mercury grew to represent around 60% of Synapse's revenue at its peak; Pathak put Mercury's share at about 35% of Synapse's business in September 2023. ¹

qualification

Both shares are informal estimates from interviews: the 60% figure from unnamed former employees and the 35% figure from Pathak. Pathak declined to comment on the former employees' criticism.

documentedMercury left Synapse for a direct relationship with Evolve in the autumn of 2023. According to Synapse, Mercury gave notice on September 25, 2023, the day of Evolve's breach notice, that it would not renew its contract, and two days later Mercury and Evolve said they would move more than $3 billion of Mercury depositor funds from the Synapse program to a direct Evolve program; a technology-press timeline dates the end of both Evolve's and Mercury's relationships with Synapse to October 13, 2023. FINRA likewise found that in or around October 2023 Synapse's biggest customer, a fintech whose end users had about $3 billion at Synapse's first deposit bank, began partnering directly with that bank. ^{2 3 4 5 1}

qualification

The FINRA finding is part of the order accepting Mark Paverman's settlement offer (neither admitted nor denied; not binding on others) and does not name the fintech or the bank.

response

A Mercury spokesperson said that after its experience with Synapse, Mercury had concluded that direct relationships and integrations with its partner banks were in the long-term interest of Mercury and its customers.

documentedSynapse confirmed on October 6, 2023 that it had laid off 86 people, about 40% of its staff, four months after cutting 18% of its workforce. A 2025 business-press report, describing the loss of Evolve and Mercury as a perfect storm, said Synapse's revenue had been cut by more than a third and put the October layoffs at more than 100 employees. ^{3 1}

qualification

The published head-counts differ (86 in the company's confirmation as reported in 2024; more than 100 in a 2025 report).

documentedIn June 2024 the trustee said further reconciliation was likely to show a shortfall predating Synapse's bankruptcy petition, as Pathak had previously reported in a May 9, 2024 post on Mercury reconciliation issues and as had been the subject of the legal dispute begun by Mercury's petition; the trustee added that full reconciliation to the last dollar with the Synapse and fintech-partner ledgers might not be possible. ⁶

documentedSeparately from Synapse, Mercury, a fintech without a bank charter that works with partner banks, entered a settlement with the California DFPI in which the Commissioner found that its Twitter handle @bankmercury, website phrases such as 'building a bank for startups' and 'Mercury makes bank accounts', and use of the FDIC logo violated California law on the use of the word 'bank'; under the agreement the Commissioner ordered Mercury to cease and desist from using the word bank or banking in its name or Twitter handle and from using the FDIC logo in a misleading manner. Chief executive Immad Akhund signed for Mercury on December 24, 2021, and the agreement names neither Synapse nor any partner bank. ⁹

qualification

Mercury entered the agreement while neither admitting nor denying the Commissioner's findings.

documentedWhen the trustee was appointed on May 24, 2024 the partner banks had lost access to Synapse's systems, had reason to believe Synapse's ledger was inaccurate and had found unexpected shortfalls in the FBO accounts they held, and they had no channels or safeguards for sharing data with one another. They agreed to pause distributions to end users while they investigated and reconciled accounts across the banks, and on May 31, 2024 the court approved a stipulated protective order allowing the banks and the trustee to share confidential trial balances and reconciliation data. ¹

documentedThe trustee was told that Synapse and Synapse Brokerage, though separate companies, shared employees, functions and systems, including a single intertwined ledger database on MongoDB; that the brokerage's former president and its only other employee had been terminated effective May 24, 2024; and that the partner banks generally regarded May 17, 2024 as the last date on which Synapse's ledger was completed and accessible. The debtor had terminated all its employees and contractors on May 24, 2024 for lack of funds, leaving no one to interpret the ledger, and the estate could not afford a forensic accounting firm. Evolve told the trustee it could reconcile the DDA accounts it held through Synapse but not the brokerage accounts, for which it had only processed payments. ²

documentedIn her first report, filed on June 7, 2024, the trustee relayed the banks' figures as of June 6, 2024: they held about $180 million in DDA and FBO accounts associated with fintech end users and possible platform reserves, while the remaining trial balance, after distributions some banks made before her appointment, was about $265 million, implying a shortfall of about $85 million. The source of the shortfall, including whether end-user funds and negative-balance accounts had been moved among the banks, was not known. ²

documentedA week later, on June 13, 2024, the trustee reported that at least one partner bank now put the FBO shortfall at about $65 million to $96 million; the range reflected about $31 million of Synapse-related interest and rebate payments held at certain banks whose ownership by end users had yet to be determined. The banks' positions differed: American Bank reported no shortfall and said other banks owed it about $2,337,000 for unsettled debit transactions of May 8 to 23, 2024; AMG reported no shortfall and said it had reconciled all its FBO funds dollar for dollar against the Synapse trial balance; Evolve said it had not yet reconciled enough to determine whether it had a shortfall; and Lineage said it lacked the data to tell. ¹

documentedThe demand deposit accounts were the smaller part of the problem: the banks told the trustee they had fully reconciled them, and no shortfall was reported between the DDA cash and the amounts owed to DDA end users on the Synapse trial balances. Evolve began paying out DDA funds on instructions from its regulator; by June 20, 2024 it had paid about $5.369 million to 3,317 end users on eight platforms. By November 12, 2024, of about $6.5 million in DDA funds held by Evolve and Lineage at the trustee's appointment, $5,884,188, about 91%, had been paid out. ^{1 3 4}

documentedAt the trustee's appointment on May 24, 2024 the four banks held $219,077,467 of FBO funds connected with Synapse: $43,339 at American Bank, $110,290,040 at AMG National Trust, $46,926,558 at Evolve and $61,817,530 at Lineage. Evolve's funds came from net incoming payment activity of Synapse Brokerage, and Lineage's single FBO account combined DDA and FBO funds. ^{3 1}

documentedAMG National Trust, which held about $110 million, paid out about $55 million immediately before the trustee's appointment and about $99 million to more than 31,000 end users of 12 platforms by June 20, 2024. By November 12, 2024 it had paid $109,869,963, 99.6% of its FBO funds, for about 91,400 end users; its payments included $2,360,734 for Juno end users, with $137,366 remaining, and $1,289,619 for Yotta end users, with $173,636 remaining. ^{3 4}

documentedLineage Bank had paid out $49,200,617 of FBO funds by August 29, 2024 and $55,252,015 for 10,175 end users, 91% of its FBO funds, by November 12, 2024. ³

documentedEvolve completed its reconciliation as of October 18, 2024 and began notifying end users and paying them on November 4, 2024. By November 12, 2024 end users had chosen payment methods for more than $21 million of FBO funds from Evolve, including users of Juno, YieldStreet, Yotta and Clerkie, against the $46,926,558 Evolve held in May; the trustee's table shows 44% of Evolve's FBO funds distributed. Evolve declined, citing pending litigation, to give the trustee reconciled balances for individual end users or fintech partners, and the trustee wrote that she was disappointed in the results of Evolve's reconciliation, which notified some end users of amounts considerably less than shown on the Synapse ledger. ³

documentedOverall, by November 12, 2024, $187,121,978, about 85% of the $219,077,467 in FBO funds held at the trustee's appointment, had been distributed and $31,955,489 remained. The trustee stated that she expressed no opinion on whether any partner bank's liability to end users was limited to the amounts held in FBO or DDA accounts, and reported no change to the estimated shortfall of $65 million to $95 million. ³

documentedIn June 2025, seeking to end the case, the trustee told the court that after months of reconciliation the partner banks reported holding about $219 million of end-user cash at Synapse's closure in May 2024, that an apparent shortfall of $65 million to $95 million against the amounts recorded in Synapse's ledger had persisted throughout, and that the shortfall appeared to have existed before the bankruptcy. All partner banks had completed the reconciliation needed to return funds and most of the $219 million had been distributed, but the exact amount and sources of the shortfall had not been established: the estate lacked resources, and some banks declined to share reconciliation and distribution data voluntarily. ⁵

documentedPress reports in June 2024 put the number of people locked out of their accounts at more than 100,000, with combined deposits of $265 million citing the trustee, and at more than 200,000 customers; in July 2024 a technology-press timeline reported that about $158.6 million was still owed to end users. In September 2025 a trade-press report said that many end users of partner fintechs, including Yotta, Juno and Copper, still could not access their funds 17 months after the bankruptcy. ^{9 10 11 12}

qualification

Press estimates; the trustee's reports give dollar amounts and per-bank counts of paid end users rather than a single total of affected people.

documentedIn 2023 Synapse's audit committee engaged Kroll, Inc. to audit and reconcile Synapse's ledgers, and in June 2024 the trustee was meeting Kroll to discuss the findings of that work on Synapse's systems, transaction history and governance. ¹

documentedOn June 28, 2024 Senators Sherrod Brown, Ron Wyden, Tammy Baldwin and John Fetterman wrote to Synapse's major investors, its principal bank and fintech partners, among them W. Scott Stafford as president and chief executive of Evolve Bank & Trust, and its former chief executive, Sankaet Pathak, that customers had been unable to reach their money since mid-May, that there was a potential shortfall of $65 million to $96 million between what consumers were owed and what the partner banks held, and that as major equity holders, operators of Synapse-dependent services and partner banks it was ultimately the recipients' responsibility to ensure the safety and accessibility of end-user funds; they urged the recipients to pool resources to release all frozen deposits immediately. ^{18 19}

qualification

A request from members of Congress; it assigns no legal liability.

documentedReplying on July 2, 2024 to the trustee's letter of June 20, the Federal Reserve Board's general counsel, Mark Van Der Weide, expressed sincere concern for harmed consumers and wrote that identifying exact balances was complex because Synapse-related funds sat at several banks, often in accounts held for the benefit of multiple users; he said the Federal Reserve, as Evolve's primary federal regulator, expected supervised banks to return customer funds consistent with applicable law and would continue to monitor Evolve's progress in returning customer funds affected by the bankruptcy. ²⁰

documentedOn July 1, 2024 the trustee's counsel wrote to MongoDB, which had said it intended to terminate services on the debtor's subscriptions because post-petition bills were unpaid, that its systems held Synapse records not found anywhere else and that reconciling Synapse's ledger with the banks' ledgers was needed both to let the banks distribute more than $100 million they held for end users and to identify the origin of a $65 million to $96 million shortfall. ²⁰

documentedBy November 2024 affected end users had appealed Evolve's reconciliation results, contacted lawmakers and filed claims with the FDIC, the CFPB and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Evolve's primary regulator; a website set up by a group of users coordinated complaints to the Federal Reserve against Evolve, Lineage, AMG and American Bank. ²¹

documentedThe CFPB's Civil Penalty Fund allocated $46,248,291 for victims in the Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. matter in its November 28, 2025 allocation and a further $8,965,767 on May 29, 2026; Yotta's status page reported that the timing and amounts of the CFPB's payments remained to be determined. ^{23 22}

documentedBefore filing, the debtor said, it explored investment, restructuring and sale options: around the spring of 2022 it engaged William Blair as investment banker to seek new capital and worked with Sherwood Partners, Inc. as financial adviser; it later replaced William Blair and sought to engage Jefferies LLC to market the company for sale as a going concern, receiving several offers. ¹

documentedBy unanimous written consent dated April 10 and 11, 2024, the board of directors of Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc., signed by Sankaet Pathak, Doug Marchant and Hillary Quirk as all of its members, resolved to file a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in the Central District of California and designated Pathak as the responsible party and designated officer of the company during the case. ²

documentedOn April 19, 2024 Synapse signed an asset purchase agreement under which TabaPay, or its designee, would buy substantially all of its assets, including its equity in its two subsidiaries, for $9,700,000 in cash plus other consideration such as assumed contracts. The sale was to close in three stages: the main assets by April 30, 2024, subject among other conditions to program reconciliations and third-party consents; the broker-dealer subsidiary by May 30, 2024, after a FINRA change-of-control process; and the lending subsidiary by April 19, 2025. At the petition date the debtor described its primary assets as about $2 million in cash, its technology platform, customer agreements and the equity in its subsidiaries, and possible claims against third parties. ¹

documentedSynapse Financial Technologies, Inc. filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition on April 22, 2024 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, San Fernando Valley Division (Case No. 1:24-bk-10646-MB, Judge Martin R. Barash). Sankaet Pathak signed the petition as chief executive officer; the debtor was represented by Levene, Neale, Bender, Yoo & Golubchik L.L.P., and an official committee of unsecured creditors was later appointed. ^{3 2}

documentedThe petition estimated 50 to 99 creditors and assets and liabilities each in the range of $10,000,001 to $50 million, according to a trade-press report. The list of the 20 largest unsecured creditors was headed by Kroll Associates, Inc. ($473,662.28), Thomson Reuters ($290,822.50, disputed), Lineage Bank ($276,812.26, disputed), Amazon Web Services ($261,509.36), Jones Day ($229,275.00), Trulioo ($225,754.20) and MasterCard International ($210,900.83, disputed); TabaPay, Inc. ($67,500.02) and Yotta Technologies Inc ($65,172.33) were also listed. ^{4 2}

documentedThe debtor stated that its only intellectual-property asset was a registered trademark and that it had no copyright or patent assets. ⁵

documentedUnder a Loan and Security Agreement of February 19, 2021, Silicon Valley Bank agreed to lend Synapse and Synapse Credit in two tranches of up to $4 million and up to $2 million, interest-only until January 31, 2022 and then repayable in 36 monthly instalments, secured on all of Synapse's personal property other than intellectual property; a UCC financing statement was filed in Delaware the same day. The debtor described SVB as the predecessor of First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company and estimated about $1.5 million owing as of April 30, 2024. ⁵

documentedSilicon Valley Bank was acquired by First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company after it entered receivership; in 2024 the creditor was listed as Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company, Synapse's primary operating accounts were held at First Citizens Bank as acquirer of Silicon Valley Bank, and by June 2025 First Citizens was owed about $1.5 million under the SVB loan. ^{6 1 7}

documentedUnder a Plain English Growth Capital Loan and Security Agreement of July 29, 2022, lenders identified as TPVG, TPVL and TPC, with TriplePoint Capital LLC as collateral agent, made three facilities available to Synapse: $9 million, $6 million subject to milestones and warrant agreements, and $5 million subject to milestones. TriplePoint took a lien on all of Synapse's personal property, filed in Delaware the same day, with deposit account control agreements over accounts at SVB, Evolve and Independent Bank, and its claims were subordinated to SVB's senior debt. Before the filing TriplePoint agreed to accept a discounted payoff of $7,199,624.29 if paid by May 6, 2024. ^{5 1}

documentedTriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. listed in its portfolio a growth capital loan to Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. acquired on July 29, 2022 at Prime plus 5.75% with a 9.75% floor and a 4.00% end-of-term payment, maturing on July 31, 2025, and a warrant for 3,913 shares of Synapse's non-voting stock acquired the same day, according to its 2024 registration statement on Form N-2. ⁸

documentedIn June 2025 the trustee reported that First Citizens was owed about $1.5 million and TriplePoint about $7.2 million, both secured on Synapse's property, and that under the cash collateral orders both lenders had received adequate-protection liens and superpriority administrative claims. A stipulation between the trustee and First Citizens on applying cash collateral was filed on November 3, 2025 and approved by the court on November 6, 2025. ^{3 7}

documentedThe court approved bidding procedures on May 1, 2024 and set the sale hearing for May 9. At that hearing Synapse reported that it had failed to reach a settlement with Evolve, and the buyer said it would not proceed without one, so the sale process was halted; the trustee later referred to TabaPay's cancelled asset purchase. ^{6 7}

documentedOn May 15, 2024 the United States Trustee for the Central District of California filed an emergency motion to convert the case to Chapter 7 or, alternatively, to appoint a Chapter 11 trustee; according to a technology-press account of the motion, the U.S. Trustee said Synapse had grossly mismanaged its estate, with losses continuing and little reasonable likelihood of reorganization. ^{9 6}

documentedOn May 24, 2024 the debtor reported that it would run out of cash, terminate its remaining employees and cease operations by the end of that day, and that without new funding, which did not appear available, there was no chance of a reorganization or a going-concern sale. At the hearing that day one of its lawyers told the court, according to a press report, that all of the company's funds were gone. ^{10 7 11}

documentedGranting the U.S. Trustee's motion on May 24, 2024, Judge Barash ordered the appointment of a Chapter 11 trustee on the basis of findings stated orally at the hearing, directed the trustee to meet and confer with the fintech platforms, partner banks and secured lenders and to file weekly status reports from June 6, 2024, and ordered the debtor, its subsidiaries, officers, directors, shareholders and current and former employees to preserve all evidence and not to delete, alter or conceal any documents or electronic information about the debtor's business. The U.S. Trustee appointed Jelena McWilliams, a former chair of the FDIC, as trustee. ^{12 3 13 6}

documentedAt the May 24, 2024 hearing, as reported by the press, the judge ordered weekly status reports and in-person status conferences, reiterated the preservation order for Synapse's current and former employees, and said it was a horrible situation for customers who could not buy food or pay their mortgage or rent. ¹¹

documentedThe trustee's second report described Sankaet Pathak and Tracey Guerin as former Synapse officers who testified under oath at the creditors' meeting on June 10, 2024; Pam Wismer, an independent contractor from Ascent CFO Solutions, had provided part-time chief financial officer services to the debtor, and Jack Doan was its former chief human resources officer. The first report described Guerin as the debtor's former general counsel. ^{6 14}

documentedThe trustee obtained access to the debtor's MongoDB database, Slack, Rippling HR system and the data room prepared for TabaPay's due diligence; administrative access to MongoDB came from former officers. Master credentials to Synapse's Amazon Web Services environment, where ledger records were also stored, were reported to be known only to two former engineers, who did not at first respond and later said they no longer had access. ^{6 15}

documentedAccording to Yotta's status page, the trustee reported in early July 2024 that B. Riley Financial, Inc. had been retained to help with forensic accounting and the management of the Synapse estate. ¹⁶

documentedIn June 2024 the trustee reported that the debtor appeared to have no available liquidity and no arrangement with its secured lenders to use cash collateral if the estate obtained funding; the estate could not pay its counsel or financial advisers throughout the trustee's appointment. ^{6 7}

documentedThe trustee tried to sell the remaining assets, chiefly the technology platform and data. Pathak's declaration of May 6, 2024 had put the net book value of office equipment at $9,931 and of all intellectual property at $408,544, and the trustee considered the customer lists and goodwill worthless. The court approved bidding procedures on October 17, 2024, but no qualified bid arrived by the extended deadline of November 11, 2024, the auction was adjourned, and bids received did not exceed the secured liens or justify the cost of completing a sale. ⁷

documentedThe trustee said the debtor might hold valuable claims against third parties, but the estate had no funds to investigate or litigate them and she found no contingency-counsel or sale arrangement that would return meaningful value; she also noted that the ledger data held by MongoDB and Amazon Web Services might matter to affected people, while the estate could not pay for its upkeep. ⁷

documentedOn the trustee's motion of June 5, 2025 to convert or dismiss the case, the court entered an order approving dismissal of the Chapter 11 case on November 12, 2025. On June 29, 2026 the clerk closed the case, discharged the trustee and exonerated her bond. ³

documentedJeffrey Alan Stanley was registered as a general securities principal through Synapse Brokerage from February 2023 to June 2024. According to FINRA he functionally acted as its chief executive before December 2023, supervising the firm, approving account openings and fund transfers and serving as its point of contact with Synapse, and was its president and chief executive in title from December 2023 to May 2024; the firm filed a Form U5 on June 21, 2024 reporting his voluntary departure. California's DFPI describes him as chief executive and a control person of the firm from December 2023 to July 2024. His FINRA record lists earlier posts as chief operating officer of Insperex (2020–2022) and as chief operating officer and chief risk officer of D.A. Davidson & Co. (2012–2020), and earlier registrations with Sterne, Agee & Leach and FTN Financial Securities. ^{1 2 3}

documentedMark Elliot Paverman was registered as a general securities principal through Synapse Brokerage from January 2021 to January 2025, while also registered in that capacity with about 30 other FINRA member firms. The firm's records identified him as its president and chief executive from March 2021 to December 2023, and he was chief compliance officer from December 2023 to January 2025; the firm filed a Form U5 on January 13, 2025 reporting his voluntary departure. FINRA found that he was an outside part-time consultant who spent about five hours a week on the firm; his FINRA record shows him as principal of his own compliance consultancy in Boca Raton, Florida since June 2019. ^{1 4 5}

documentedCalifornia's DFPI states that Sankaet Pathak, founder and chief executive of Synapse Financial Technologies, was a control person of Synapse Brokerage from June 2020. ²

qualification

The end date of Pathak's control-person status is cut off in the retained copy of the DFPI accusation.

documentedIn an order of January 28, 2026 accepting his offer of settlement, Paverman consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to findings that he caused Synapse Brokerage to violate FINRA Rules 4511 and 2010 by failing to preserve, from December 2023 to June 2024, emails of three registered representatives, instant messages of all of them and communications of parent-company staff performing brokerage functions, and that in May 2023 he gave FINRA a false undertaking that the firm contracted directly with its records vendor and had independent access to its records, when the contract was the parent's and the firm depended on the parent for access. He was suspended for 12 months in all principal capacities, from February 17, 2026 to February 16, 2027, fined $20,000 and required to requalify as a general securities principal. ^{1 8}

documentedOn May 22, 2026 FINRA accepted Stanley's offer of settlement in the same proceeding. Without admitting or denying the allegations, he consented to findings that from at least September 2023 to May 2024 the firm, acting through him, failed to maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to ensure compliance with FINRA rules: he approved opening cash management accounts and moving customer funds without adequate authorisation, let a non-member parent perform significant brokerage functions including keeping the ledger used to reconcile customer balances without supervision, and failed to investigate red flags of substantial discrepancies between the parent's ledgers and those of third-party banks. He was suspended from any principal capacity for 12 months (to May 21, 2027) and from all capacities for four months (to September 21, 2026) and must requalify by examination; in light of his financial status no monetary sanction was imposed. ³

documentedFINRA suspended Synapse Brokerage on March 18, 2025 for failing to file its December 2024 annual audit report and failing to keep its Form BD current and accurate, and on June 23, 2025 expelled it from membership because it had not asked for the suspensions to be lifted within three months. ⁴

documentedCalifornia's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation began examining Synapse Brokerage's books and records on June 14, 2024. On October 11, 2024 Commissioner Clothilde V. Hewlett issued an accusation and notice of intent to revoke its broker-dealer certificate, finding that the firm had failed to produce required records (of beneficial owners, written customer complaints, communications and agreements with clients and financial institutions), that its net capital in May 2024 was $217,972, $32,028 short of the $250,000 minimum, and that it had not filed monthly interim financial reports from May to September 2024. ²

documentedOn January 22, 2025 the Acting Commissioner revoked Synapse Brokerage's broker-dealer certificate, first issued on March 22, 2010, after the firm did not request a hearing. DFPI's statement in the firm's regulatory record notes that the parent's bankruptcy left thousands of the brokerage's clients unable to reach their funds and that, while some had their funds returned, an estimated $60 million or more was unaccounted for as of January 2025. ^{4 9}

documentedBy an order of July 10, 2024, effective immediately, the Commissioner of Financial Protection and Innovation revoked Synapse Credit LLC's California Financing Law license (No. 60DBO-113301); Synapse Credit had been served with the notice and accusation in June 2024 and did not request a hearing. DFPI later said it was the first regulator to take formal action after the Synapse bankruptcy. ^{10 11}

documentedOn August 21, 2025 the CFPB filed an adversary complaint against Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. within its bankruptcy case (Adv. No. 1:25-ap-01052-MB), together with a proposed stipulated final judgment. The single count alleged that Synapse, as a service provider to the fintech platforms and to Evolve, engaged in unfair acts or practices under sections 1031 and 1036 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act by failing to keep adequate records of where consumers' funds were and to ensure those records matched the partner banks' records, so that consumers lost access to their money. ^{1 2 3 4}

response

The trustee and the debtor neither admitted nor denied the allegations, and the CFPB made no allegations against the trustee.

outcome

Resolved by the stipulated final judgment entered on September 12, 2025, which bans Synapse from deposit-taking, money transmission, custody of funds and payment processing, bars the sale of customer information and imposes a $1 penalty; the CFPB then allocated money from its Civil Penalty Fund to affected consumers.

documentedJudge Barash entered the stipulated final judgment on September 12, 2025. The trustee, acting for the debtor, agreed to it without adjudication of any issue of fact or law; she and the debtor neither admitted nor denied the complaint's allegations, the CFPB made no allegations against the trustee, and the facts alleged were to be taken as true in any proceeding based on the judgment. The judgment permanently bars Synapse from taking part in or assisting deposit-taking, money transmission, custody of funds or payment processing, bars the debtor and the trustee from selling customer information, and imposes a civil money penalty of $1, allowed as a general unsecured claim, which the CFPB said enabled it to use its Civil Penalty Fund to compensate harmed consumers. ^{3 1}

documentedThe judgment defines the harm to affected consumers, anyone with an account at a fintech platform served by Synapse on May 17, 2024, as the difference between each consumer's balance with the platform on that date and the sum of distributions paid to the consumer by Evolve Bank & Trust, AMG National Trust Bank or Lineage Bank since then, plus prejudgment interest. ³

documentedIn a consent order in Case No. 16-041 (filed June 2020), the New Hampshire Banking Department stated its contention that SynapseFi, formerly Synapse Payments LLC, had conducted 1,187 unlicensed money transmissions for New Hampshire entities from at least 2015 to 2017, collecting fees of $82.60, and noted that the company had cooperated fully and stopped the activity in 2017. The company agreed to continue refraining from unlicensed money transmission, to amend its third-party contracts so that it was not positioned to transmit money, and to pay an administrative fine of $1,582.60; Sankaet Pathak signed as chief executive officer. ^{5 6}

qualification

The violations are the Department's contentions; the company waived a hearing and entered the order by consent.

documentedOn September 26, 2022 Connecticut's Banking Commissioner, Jorge L. Perez, issued Synapse Credit LLC a notice of intent to refuse to renew its small loan licence and of its right to a hearing: its renewal application of December 30, 2021 remained pending because it had not filed audited financial statements for 2020 and 2021, it had submitted only unaudited statements, and it had not answered a compliance letter of May 5, 2022 or surrendered the licence. The notice was sent to Michael Rasic, chief financial officer and chief business officer, as Synapse Credit's primary contact. ⁷

qualification

No later decision on the renewal appears in the record.

documentedOn June 11, 2024 the Federal Reserve Board and the Arkansas State Bank Department issued a cease-and-desist order, by consent, against Evolve Bancorp, Inc. and Evolve Bank & Trust (Docket Nos. 24-012-B-HC and 24-012-B-SM). It recites examinations of August 11, 2023, August 30, 2023 and January 10, 2024 that found deficiencies in risk management and consumer compliance at the bank's Open Banking Division, which served fintech partners, and in anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance. The order requires, among other things, controls ensuring that the ledger and sub-ledger responsibilities of the bank and its fintech partners are clearly defined, including in a business disruption, and bars the bank without prior supervisory approval from adding fintech partners, products or programs to the division; before exiting a fintech relationship the bank must give supervisors an analysis of the impact on its liquidity. ^{8 9}

qualification

The bank consented to the order without a formal proceeding or adjudication of any issue of fact or law; the Federal Reserve said the action was separate from the Synapse bankruptcy.

documentedOn January 30, 2024 the FDIC issued a consent order against Lineage Bank of Franklin, Tennessee (FDIC-23-0041b), to which the bank consented without admitting or denying charges of unsafe or unsound practices relating to its third-party risk management program and its fintech partners. The order requires the board to receive monthly reports on fintech partners' FBO-account and ACH activity and its effect on capital and liquidity, to formalise due diligence before accepting new fintech partners, and to commission an independent look-back from September 1, 2022 at all activity in the account of its largest fintech partnership to identify and report suspicious activity. ¹⁰

qualification

The order does not name the fintech partners or the largest partnership account.

documentedOn September 17, 2024 the FDIC published a proposed rule that would set heightened reconciliation and recordkeeping standards for certain custodial accounts holding commingled customer funds, citing recordkeeping issues connected with Synapse's commingling of customer funds in custodial accounts, according to a later annual report of another fintech. ¹¹

documentedUnder the consent order, signed for Yotta by board member Adam Moelis on May 8, 2026 and dated May 15, 2026 by Commissioner Khalil Mohseni, Yotta stipulated to an order to desist and refrain from deceptive acts or practices under the California Consumer Financial Protection Law, including representing that cash deposits in Yotta accounts are protected against all risks, and agreed to pay a $1,000,000 penalty: $275,000 within 14 days, $19,565.22 a month for 23 months and a final $275,000 after 24 months. A missed payment would entitle the Commissioner to impose the full penalty of $48,000,000, less any amount paid. Yotta also had to send a notice and May 2024 account information to its California customers with positive balances as of May 17, 2024. ¹²

documentedIn the federal case, Yotta voluntarily dismissed its claims against Evolve Bancorp on January 23, 2025. On May 15, 2025 Judge Trina L. Thompson granted Evolve Bank & Trust's motion to dismiss Yotta's claims of fraud, conspiracy, negligence, unfair competition and unjust enrichment, with leave to amend, and ordered Yotta to plead jurisdiction and Synapse's status as a joint tortfeasor, noting that Synapse might be a necessary party under Rule 19. Yotta filed an amended complaint on June 4, 2025; Evolve moved again to dismiss, including for failure to join a required party, and on February 18, 2026 the court granted the motion and closed the case the next day. According to the trade press, the judge ruled that Evolve did not have to face the suit because Synapse was a necessary party. ^{1 5 3 4}

documentedYotta appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (No. 26-1535). The Ninth Circuit's mandate was entered on the district-court docket on October 6, 2026; the outcome of the appeal is not visible in the retained docket. ³

documentedConsumers' putative class actions against the partner banks are consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado under lead case No. 24-cv-03259-DDD-NRN, together with Nos. 24-cv-03261, 24-cv-03262, 24-cv-03509, 25-cv-00075 and 25-cv-03284, against Evolve Bank & Trust and Evolve Bancorp, AMG National Trust Bank and Lineage Bank. The court describes the action as arising from the collapse of Synapse, through which consumer funds were deposited with those banks. On April 16, 2026 Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter granted the plaintiffs' motion to extend the schedule, setting the close of fact and class discovery for January 15, 2027, the class-certification motion deadline for March 17, 2027 and dispositive motions for September 29, 2027. ⁶

qualification

The case was pending at the evidence cutoff; no finding of liability appears in the record.

documentedAnother putative class action, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on November 27, 2024 (No. 2:24-cv-10317), named Evolve Bank & Trust, Evolve Bancorp, Inc. and Lineage Bank. On October 16, 2025 Judge George H. Wu transferred it to the District of Colorado under the first-to-file rule because of the earlier litigation there, leaving undecided the plaintiff's motion to add Synapse Financial Technologies, Synapse Brokerage, Mark Paverman and Jeffrey Stanley as defendants. ⁷

documentedOn March 5, 2026 a putative class action was filed in the Central District of California (No. 2:26-cv-02385), classified as a racketeering (RICO) case, against Synapse Financial Technologies, Synapse Brokerage, Mark Elliot Paverman, Sankaet Pathak and Jeffrey Alan Stanley; it was assigned to Judge Wu as related to the 2024 case against Evolve. A summons to Pathak was issued on April 7, 2026, and by July 29, 2026 the docket showed no proof of service on him; Paverman acknowledged service on May 4, 2026, Synapse was served through California's secretary of state under an alternative-service order and the clerk entered its default on July 1, 2026. After an order to show cause for lack of prosecution, the court set a status conference for September 17, 2026. ⁸

qualification

The docket shows the claims' classification but no ruling on their merits; a default entered by the clerk is not a judgment.

documentedIn April 2021 the owner of a house in San Francisco's Twin Peaks neighbourhood, leased from April 2015 as a residence and used as Synapse's office, sued Bryan Keltner, Sankaet Pathak and Synapse in San Francisco Superior Court for breach of contract, fraud and damage to the property, seeking nearly $1 million. On August 30, 2023 the court sustained Pathak's and Synapse's demurrer to the amended complaint with leave to amend; the case was unresolved when Synapse filed for bankruptcy. ^{9 10}

documentedSankaet Pathak founded Synapse in 2014 and was its chief executive until May 2024. He was quoted as chief executive in 2019, signed the bankruptcy petition in that capacity on April 22, 2024, and was described as Synapse's former chief executive in the senators' letter of June 28, 2024 and by the trustee. ^{1 2 3 4}

documentedBryan Keltner is described as Synapse's co-founder: a 2025 business-press report calls him Pathak's co-founder and a fellow University of Memphis alumnus, a 2024 trade-press report says he met Pathak at the university, and a corporate-data profile lists him as co-founder of Synapse since April 2014. ^{5 6 7}

documentedHillary Quirk joined Synapse as head of operations in October 2014, after serving as a program director at Start Co. in Memphis, according to a corporate-data profile; a trade newsletter reported, citing her professional profile, that she stayed at the company until August 2022. She was one of the three directors who signed the board's bankruptcy resolution in April 2024, and was described as a Synapse co-founder. ^{9 6 10 2}

documentedJeffrey Webb, listed as a director and member of Synapse Payments, LLC in its 2015 Form D, gave the same Memphis address as the company, 6745 Lenox Center Ct., Suite 300, which Varsity Spirit gives as its corporate office; a 2024 trade-press report names Jeff Webb, founder of Varsity Brands, as one of the two sources of Synapse's initial $700,000 investment. Webb, who founded Varsity Spirit in 1974, died in March 2026, according to a business-press report of March 20, 2026. ^{11 12 6 13}

qualification

The identification of the Form D director with the Varsity founder rests on the shared name, city and office address and the press report; the Varsity contact page is a current record, not a 2015 one.

documentedDouglas Marchant was a director and member of Synapse Payments, LLC in 2015 and remained on Synapse's three-member board in April 2024; the trade press describes him as a seed-round investor and as a founder of the payments company Concord EFS, later acquired by First Data. A Memphis business-network profile of a Douglas J. Marchant describes him as a founder of Concord EFS and of Unified Health Services. ^{10 2 14 13}

qualification

The business-network profile does not mention Synapse; the identification rests on name, city and the Concord EFS background.

documentedOn September 6, 2018 Synapse announced a $17 million Series A financing led by Trinity Ventures and Core Innovation Capital, with contributions from other investors; Schwark Satyavolu of Trinity Ventures and Arjan Schütte of Core Innovation Capital joined its board. ⁸

documentedIn June 2019 Synapse raised $33 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz with the existing investors Trinity Ventures and Core Innovation Capital, bringing its total funding to $50 million; Angela Strange, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined the board as part of the investment. A corporate-data aggregator puts total funding at $50.7 million over three rounds, the first on April 1, 2015 and the latest the Series B of June 6, 2019. ^{1 4}

documentedAccording to Pathak, Synapse's board at various times included Angela Strange of Andreessen Horowitz, Schwark Satyavolu of Trinity Ventures and Arjan Schütte of Core Innovation Capital. By the time of the bankruptcy resolution in April 2024 the board consisted of Pathak, Doug Marchant and Hillary Quirk, the directors who also approved Pathak's loans from the company. ^{10 2}

documentedStrange has been a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz since 2018 and a partner there from November 2014; Satyavolu is a venture partner at Trinity Ventures and a co-founder of the fintech companies Yodlee and Truaxis; Schütte is founder and managing partner of Core Innovation Capital and a managing member of the general partner of its third fund, Core Innovation Capital III, L.P. None of their current profile pages lists Synapse. ^{15 16 17 18 19}

documentedTracey Guerin stated in a sworn declaration of May 23, 2024 that she had been general counsel of Synapse Financial Technologies since June 2022 and associate general counsel from June 14, 2018 until June 2022. ²⁰

documentedMichael Rasic was listed as an officer of Synapse Financial Technologies and of Synapse Credit in Washington's registry; in September 2022 Connecticut addressed Synapse Credit's licence notice to him as its chief financial officer and chief business officer, and a trade newsletter refers to him as Synapse's chief financial officer in early 2023. ^{21 22}

documentedVictor Medeiros is described in press reports as Synapse's former corporate controller and as a former senior director in its finance department. ⁵

documentedAll remaining Synapse employees were terminated as of May 24, 2024, after which the company was run by the Chapter 11 trustee. ²³

documentedJelena McWilliams, the Chapter 11 trustee, was sworn in as the 21st chair of the FDIC on June 5, 2018 and led the agency until 2021. She had earlier been executive vice president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary of Fifth Third Bank, chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee and an attorney at the Federal Reserve Board, and had practised corporate and securities law at Morrison & Foerster and Hogan & Hartson. During the trusteeship she was a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which represented her as trustee; in January 2026 the fintech Plaid hired her as president of corporate and external affairs. ^{24 25 26 27}

documentedWhile still chief executive of Synapse, Pathak co-founded a humanoid robotics company, Foundation, in April 2024 with Arjun Sethi, chief executive of the venture firm Tribe Capital, and Mike LeBlanc, a co-founder of Cobalt Robotics, according to the company's fundraising pitch as reported by the business press. A private-market data provider lists Foundation Robotics Labs of San Francisco, founded by the three in 2024, with an $11 million Series A-1 round on August 22, 2024 at a $73.33 million valuation (Tribe Capital) and a $187 million Series A on August 19, 2025 at a $1.32 billion valuation. Florida's corporate registry lists Foundation Future Industries, Inc., a Delaware corporation registered in Florida on April 22, 2025 with a principal address at 617 Bryant Street, San Francisco, and Sankaet Pathak as its president. In January 2026 a technology newsletter, citing two sources, reported that Foundation Future was seeking up to $500 million at a valuation of more than $3 billion, and in March 2026 a news magazine described Pathak as Foundation's co-founder and chief executive and the company as developing humanoid robots, including for military use. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

qualification

The record does not establish whether Foundation Robotics Labs and Foundation Future Industries, Inc. are the same legal entity; the press uses both names for the company co-founded by Pathak, Sethi and LeBlanc. The funding figures come from a private-market data provider and a newsletter's sources, not from company filings.

documentedEvolve Bank & Trust of West Memphis, Arkansas, is a state-chartered bank that is a member of the Federal Reserve System; it is owned and controlled by the registered bank holding company Evolve Bancorp, Inc., and both are supervised by the Federal Reserve Board and the Arkansas State Bank Department. Through its Open Banking Division the bank offered deposit accounts and payment processing to fintech partners, which in turn offered financial products to end users. The FFIEC's National Information Center lists the bank (RSSD ID 592448, FDIC certificate 1299) as an active state member bank engaged in commercial banking and Evolve Bancorp (RSSD ID 1142411) as a bank holding company, both at 301 Shoppingway Boulevard, West Memphis. ^{1 2 3}

documentedThe Federal Reserve's order of June 11, 2024 was addressed to Scott Stafford as president and chief executive officer of Evolve Bank & Trust and to B. Scot Lenoir as chairman of the board of Evolve Bancorp and of the bank. Evolve's 2023 investor kit describes Lenoir as the founder and chief executive of Evolve Bancorp, who founded Evolve Bank & Trust in 2004 after serving as chief executive and president of First Mercantile Trust Company, which was sold in 2000, and W. Scott Stafford as president and chief executive of the bank, formerly a senior vice president of National Bank of Commerce and an investment banker with Duncan-Williams, Inc. A financial-data profile lists Lenoir as founder in 2004 and chairman, president and chief executive of Evolve Bancorp and of Evolve Financial Group, Inc., and as a former chairman of Evolve Bank & Trust. ^{1 4 5}

qualification

Titles as stated at the dates of each source; the record does not give a complete management history.

documentedIn its parent-only FR Y-9SP reports to the Federal Reserve, Evolve Bancorp reported net income of about $7.87 million for 2024, including $8.72 million of income from its bank subsidiary, and a net loss of about $7.39 million for 2025, including a $3.02 million loss attributed to the bank subsidiary. At the end of 2025 the parent's total assets were about $165 million, its long-term borrowings $51.1 million and its equity capital $107.3 million, against $114.1 million of equity a year earlier; the group's total consolidated assets fell from about $1.81 billion at the end of 2024 to about $1.29 billion at the end of 2025. Both reports name KPMG of Atlanta as external auditor, record a full-scope independent audit and were signed by chief financial officer Mark Mosteller. A business-press report in October 2025 said Evolve Bank & Trust had lost $8.76 million in the first six months of 2025 while keeping its focus on banking-as-a-service. ^{6 7 8}

qualification

FR Y-9SP amounts are reported in thousands of dollars and rounded here; the parent-only schedule does not show the bank's own statements.

documentedYotta Technologies, Inc. is a Delaware corporation. California's DFPI describes it as having a business address in San Francisco and the website withyotta.com, and Adam Moelis as its co-founder, former chief executive and a member of its board; it offered high-interest personal savings accounts to California consumers without registering with the California Secretary of State. A copy of New York's corporate registry gives a foreign incorporation date of October 18, 2019 and registration in New York as a foreign business corporation from March 10, 2020 (DOS ID 5724855); its 2022 biennial statement was filed by Adam Moelis, and a filing of March 1, 2026 names Ben Doyle as chief executive officer. ^{1 2}

documentedYotta, which offered sweepstakes games and prizes to people who opened savings accounts with it, signed a contract with Synapse on February 13, 2020 that let it use Synapse's software to interface with Evolve; the federal court recorded that Evolve and Synapse worked together to service Yotta's customers, that Evolve's systems processed certain transactions while Synapse handled others involving funds held with Evolve, and that Yotta and Evolve had no contract with each other. Yotta's disclosures stated that banking services were provided by Evolve Bank & Trust and Synapse Brokerage's program banks, that its debit card was issued by Evolve and that lending services were offered through Synapse Credit LLC. ^{3 4 5}

documentedThe federal court's order of May 15, 2025 referred to two other cases in the Southern District of New York: one against Yotta Technologies and Evolve Bank and Trust (No. 24-cv-5535) and one against Yotta Technologies (No. 22-cv-8569). ³

qualification

The order cites the cases without describing them; their claims and outcomes are not in the record.