By Ray Dombrowski
BUFFALO — For three decades, the checks from Woodhill Capital Corp. arrived like clockwork, typically on the 10th or the 25th of the month. Investors in Western New York and beyond believed the money came from small businesses paying off loans for office furniture, construction gear, logging rigs and medical equipment. Federal prosecutors now say most of it came from other investors.
Richard Teplitsky, 72, the president of Woodhill Capital Corp., a Williamsville equipment finance company, pleaded guilty Friday to mail fraud before U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The numbers in the plea are far larger than anything that was public when the company stopped paying investors this spring. As of March 2026, prosecutors said, Woodhill owed payments to approximately 200 investors on roughly 1,800 outstanding loans that prosecutors described as fraudulent. They put the total loss at $54,406,742.
This account is drawn from the federal plea announcement, the May criminal complaint announcement, a verified class-action complaint filed in State Supreme Court in Erie County, and published reports. Several people named in the civil suit have not been charged with any crime, and the civil claims against them are allegations that have not been proven.
What Mr. Teplitsky admitted
According to the plea agreement as summarized by prosecutors, Mr. Teplitsky and other Woodhill personnel solicited money from investors by telling them it would fund loans to businesses seeking to buy commercial equipment. Investors were promised returns “as high as 14 percent or more,” the release said, and in exchange received copies of equipment financing agreements between Woodhill and borrowers, along with amortization schedules laying out monthly payments.
The paperwork was the product being sold, and much of it was fiction.
“Between the mid-1990s through March 2026, despite his representations to investors, Teplitsky did not use most investor money to fund loans to borrowers,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Instead, he used their money to pay amounts Woodhill owed to prior investors.”
Prosecutors said Mr. Teplitsky “would create fraudulent equipment financing agreements and amortization schedules falsely representing to investors that their money was being used to fund loans to borrowers.”
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul E. Bonanno, and the plea followed an investigation by the FBI’s Buffalo field office under Special Agent-in-Charge Allen D. Davis II. “Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date,” the office said.
The prosecution was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office under U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo, who announced both the May arrest and Friday’s plea.
How it unraveled
The scheme came apart in March, when the checks stopped.
When Mr. Teplitsky was arrested on May 5, prosecutors described the experience of one investor, identified only as Victim 1, in the announcement of the criminal complaint. Victim 1 had held approximately 15 investment loans with Woodhill since 2018 and received monthly payments from the company through February 2026. In March, no payment came.
He tried to reach Mr. Teplitsky and could not, the complaint said. He then contacted other investors and learned they had not been paid either. So he did something that the paperwork made possible: he sent certified letters to the borrowers listed on his loans, directing them to pay him instead of Woodhill.
Approximately three or four borrowers responded, according to the complaint, “claiming that they did not have a loan with Woodhill, that the amount of the loan was incorrect, or that it was not their signature on the equipment financing agreement.”
At the time of the arrest, the government said it had identified more than 100 victims with estimated losses of more than $10 million. Mr. Teplitsky made an initial appearance that afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer and was released on home confinement with electronic monitoring.
“The fact that a defendant has been charged with a crime is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty,” the office said at the time. Friday’s guilty plea resolves that question as to Mr. Teplitsky on the mail fraud count.
The civil case: “a financial mess”
Before any federal charge, a group of investors went to state court.
On April 3, 2026, Bingel LLC, the proposed class representative, and other individual and business investors filed a verified complaint in State Supreme Court in Erie County against Woodhill Capital Corp., Mr. Teplitsky, chief executive Steven Basden, vice president David Shumaker and the Estate of Charles Mangione. The plaintiffs are represented by Duke Holzman Photiadis & Ritter LLP of Buffalo.
The suit asserts claims including fraud, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and violations of state and federal racketeering and securities laws, including New York’s Martin Act. Mr. Basden, Mr. Shumaker and the Mangione estate have not been charged with any crime, and none of the civil allegations against them has been proven in court.
“Defendants solicited and obtained investment funds from Plaintiffs for the purpose of repaying earlier investors in furtherance of an illegal Ponzi scheme,” the complaint alleges.
The filing describes a company with a long public track record. Woodhill’s website, the complaint notes, said the firm had been “in the financing business for almost 40 years” and had “financed thousands of businesses[.]” It held itself out as offering “in depth and extensive industry experience.”
According to the complaint, the amortization schedules and other documents Woodhill gave investors “were materially false, including that they misrepresented the amount of financing provided to the third party, the interest rate charged to the third party, and in some cases that a third party even existed.”
The suit alleges three variations on the deception: loans that were made for smaller amounts than investors were told, allowing the difference to be pocketed; loans made at higher interest rates than disclosed; and loans that did not exist at all.
“To lull Plaintiffs into a sense of security and comfort, and in furtherance of the Ponzi scheme, Defendants furnished Plaintiffs with periodic account statements and summaries that fraudulently indicated Plaintiffs’ investment returns,” the complaint states.
One check, one text message
The complaint walks through a single transaction to show how the pitch worked.
On or about July 27, 2023, according to the filing, Mr. Teplitsky sent a text message to Robert Bingel, a representative of Bingel LLC, advising him that there was a loan for a company called Rustic Market Renovations LLC “that needed fulfillment.” That same day, Bingel LLC wrote a check for $25,709.07.
Also that day, the complaint says, Bingel LLC received an equipment financing agreement between Woodhill and Rustic Market Renovations, an assignment signed by Mr. Teplitsky as Woodhill’s president, and an amortization schedule showing payment dates, the interest rate and payment amounts. Every month after that, until March 2026, Bingel LLC received a payment from Woodhill along with an investment summary showing the remaining balances.
The complaint does not say whether Rustic Market Renovations had any loan from Woodhill. It attaches the check, the agreement, the assignment, the schedule and a February 2026 investment summary as exhibits.
“Suspended,” then more solicitations
On or about March 10, 2026, according to the complaint, Woodhill informed some investors that all payments were being “suspended.”
The suit alleges that Mr. Teplitsky nonetheless “continued to solicit investments from other Class members for purported new equipment lease opportunities.” The complaint calls this one example of the company seeking new money “despite the non-existence of new leases/loans.”
When the investors’ lawyers began asking questions, the complaint says, the defendants directed all inquiries to Buffalo attorney Frederick J. Gawronski, as counsel for Woodhill.
According to the filing, Mr. Gawronski “advised that Defendants had created a ‘financial mess,’” that he was uncertain if and when any payments would resume, and that he was uncertain if and when a financial accounting might be provided. The complaint says Mr. Gawronski would not agree to hold investor money in Woodhill’s bank accounts in escrow, and that he “would not confirm nor deny that Defendants had operated a Ponzi scheme.”
Those characterizations of Mr. Gawronski’s statements come from the plaintiffs’ complaint. The Chronicle has not independently confirmed them and is seeking his comment.
Who lost what
The named plaintiffs in the state case listed their own losses at $13,376,437.21. The largest figures belonged to two members of one family: Anthony S. and Lynn Madonia, listed at $5,598,842.59, and Anthony A. Madonia, listed at $4,537,078.12.
Other named plaintiffs include Rosemarie Bingel, RAO Properties, members of the DiGiore family, Consumer Capital LLC, Debra Scherrer, Frank Puglisi, Spano’s Enterprises and Richard Secchiaroli. The complaint estimated that the proposed class could include at least 70 to 100 members and alleged that at least 60 other people bought the investment contracts and lost more than an additional $5 million.
Those figures now look conservative. The federal plea puts the investor count at roughly 200 and the total loss above $54 million, more than four times what the named state-court plaintiffs claimed and about five times the “in excess of” $10 million estimate the government itself gave in May.
The trade publication Leasing News, in an April 14 report after FBI agents searched the company’s offices, noted that Woodhill was “reportedly well known on the East Coast” and that several of its readers had called to describe their experiences with the company. That report said an attorney for Woodhill “had no comment” when contacted by WGRZ’s “2 On Your Side,” and that “the FBI had no official comment.”
What comes next
Mr. Teplitsky’s sentencing date had not been set as of Friday. Federal sentencing in fraud cases is driven in large part by the size of the loss and the number of victims, and the $54.4 million figure in the plea will weigh heavily in that calculation. Any restitution order would come at sentencing.
The state class action remains pending in Erie County. Its outcome may matter most to investors trying to trace where the money went, and whether any of it can be recovered from the company, its accounts, or others named in the suit.
For investors, the case is a hard lesson in a particular kind of risk. Woodhill’s pitch was not exotic. It was a local, decades-old firm offering to put money into tangible equipment loans for real-sounding businesses, with documents, schedules and regular checks to prove it. As the federal case describes it, the documents were the scheme.
Buffalo Toronto Public Media reported the plea on Friday, noting that the government’s updated figures showed investor money was being sent to other investors “not to the borrowers and businesses the investors believed it was going to.” Read BTPM’s report here.
The Buffalo Chronicle has requested comment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York, from Duke Holzman Photiadis & Ritter, and from Mr. Gawronski on behalf of Woodhill. This story will be updated with any response. Anyone who believes they were a victim may contact the FBI Buffalo field office.
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