Tricolor Holdings — Tricolor securitizations: seven series, pool differences and the alleged collateral problem

analysisSeven TAST series remained partly outstanding near the collapse: 2022-1, 2023-1, 2024-1, 2024-2, 2024-3, 2025-1 and 2025-2. The SEC complaint totals their original note issuance at $1,816,960,000 and their remaining principal at $945,396,000. JPMorgan Securities, Barclays Capital and Fifth Third Securities held different bookrunner, joint-bookrunner or co-manager roles across the series. Auto Acceptance acted as sponsor and servicer and Auto Receivables 2 as depositor. The public June 2025 ABS-15G filing identifies the depositor by CIK 1757871 and Chu as its signing CEO.

qualification

The SEC table labels remaining principal “as of Tricolor bankruptcy,” although adjacent prose introduces offerings outstanding on 31 July 2025. This dossier preserves the table’s balance label. The SEC’s 14 TAST offerings and more than $1.9 billion since 2013 are not the same stated population as a separate account’s 17 securitizations or roughly $2.7 billion. Statistical pool descriptions, initial transferred pools and later servicing analyses also differ: 2025-2’s statistical pool of 12,570 loans is distinct from the 12,486 actually analyzed after transfer. The 2023-1 agreed-procedures file counts 10,077 statistical loans, whereas the quoted offering description counts 10,068; that snapshot difference is unresolved.

response

Deloitte’s retained agreed-procedures report did not provide assurance about the existence, ownership or actual characteristics of all pool loans. Its sample of 50 loans and comparison procedures cannot be presented as an audit that verified absence of double pledging. Its observed vehicle titles named Auto Group or Ganas Auto, which requires care when comparing contractual transfers with title records.

analysisThe criminal and SEC allegations describe repeated use of the same receivables in several warehouse facilities or trusts, manipulation of delinquency fields and vehicle identifiers, inclusion of written-off loans, and retention of collections that should have flowed to trusts. The SEC additionally alleges distorted financial valuation and covenant reporting, including a roughly $100 million bad-debt adjustment carried forward into later accounts. Its complaint says 3,225 loans remained in both the 2022-1 and 2025-2 pools. A contemporaneous lender challenge over $63 million of allegedly nonpaying loans helped trigger the August 2025 confrontation and withdrawal of funding.

qualification

The competing measurements are not amounts to add together: an indictment contrasts $2.2 billion of stated collateral with $1.4 billion underlying value; the trustee-derived analysis cited by noteholders identifies about $547.9 million of duplicate loans plus $135.5 million of fictitious loans; the SEC cites at least $675 million of overstatement; a narrower August analysis identifies $365,497,106.65 of duplicate principal in TAST pools. They concern different populations and methods, and are not a single final adjudicated loss. Noteholders’ allegations of bank knowledge were rejected at the pleading stage in the separate bank case.

response

Chu pleaded not guilty and disputes the allegations. His defense challenged the documentary support for the claimed 2018 start and argued that cooperating witnesses had incentives to minimize their own responsibility. The banks’ case ended in their favor: the court found no adequately pleaded fraudulent intent or deliberate blindness and considered the inference that the banks were themselves deceived more compelling.

outcome

Kollar, Seibold and later Goodgame entered guilty pleas in their individual criminal cases. Those pleas do not establish a conviction of Chu or liability of every lender, director or service provider.