CEO Daniel Chu faces federal bank fraud and wire fraud charges, according to a newly unsealed federal indictment.
IRVING, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
Top executives of Irving-based subprime auto lender Tricolor have been indicted on federal fraud charges, including the company’s CEO, who faces up to life in prison if convicted.
An indictment unsealed Dec. 17 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleges Tricolor founder and CEO Daniel Chu, along with Chief Operating Officer David Goodgame and other executives, orchestrated a years-long criminal enterprise that defrauded multiple banks and private credit providers. Chu and Goodgame also face charges of bank fraud and wire fraud connected with schemes to fraudulently double-pledge collateral to lenders. The company’s former chief financial officer, Jerome Kollar, and Ameryn Seibold, former senior director of finance, pleaded guilty to fraud charges on Dec. 16 and are cooperating with the government.
Tricolor allegedly created about $800 million of “bogus collateral” between 2018 and 2025 by pledging roughly $2.2 billion of collateral to lenders and investors while only having about $1.4 billion of real collateral, according to the federal indictment. In doing so, Tricolor was able to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in cash advances, of which Chu used a portion to enrich himself, according to the filing.
Lenders confronted Chu and other executives around the summer of 2025 about problems with Tricolor’s collateral, according to prosecutors. Executives then allegedly attempted to conceal or explain the fraud in secretly recorded phone calls. Chu allegedly compared Tricolor’s situation to that of Enron, the energy giant that collapsed in the early 2001s in one of the most notorious accounting scandals in U.S. history.