LCF Group Lawsuits: RICO, Usury, and Collection Practices

LCF Group, a New Hyde Park merchant cash advance company, has been the subject of several lawsuits testing whether its cash advance agreements are legitimate purchases of future business revenue or disguised high-interest loans. In the two most significant merchant-side cases, Singh v. The LCF Group and Mazzoni Center v. LCF Group, courts sided with LCF and let its agreements stand. In a third, LCF Group v. Fields, a New York judge refused to enforce an arbitration award LCF had won, calling it irrational. LCF is currently pursuing its own breach of contract suit against the Mazzoni Center for nearly half a million dollars.

The Company Behind the Litigation

LCF Group was founded in February 2011 as a broker matching small businesses with merchant cash advance funders, and later moved into direct funding with its own capital. The company pays merchants a lump sum in exchange for a percentage of future receivables, collected through automatic daily or weekly deductions. Andrew Parker, a co-founder, has been sole shareholder since 2015 and, according to filings in the Singh case, holds “complete decision-making authority over all aspects of LCF’s operations.”¹

Singh v. LCF Group

In 2023, merchants sued LCF Group and Parker in Nassau County, New York, alleging that the company’s cash advance agreements were illegal high-interest loans. The complaint brought claims under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, along with usury, unconscionability, and abusive collection allegations.¹

The plaintiffs described an “illegal loansharking” enterprise. They alleged LCF used “sham reconciliation provisions” to disguise fixed-payment loans as contingent receivables purchases, with effective interest rates running from 71% to 107%. They also said the company required merchants to sign confessions of judgment before receiving any funds, then used those pre-signed documents to obtain judgments and pursue aggressive collection when a merchant missed as few as two daily payments.¹

Justice Timothy S. Driscoll of the Nassau County Commercial Division dismissed the case on July 25, 2023. Applying the three-factor test New York courts use to distinguish loans from receivables purchases, he found that LCF’s agreements contained reconciliation provisions (even if burdensome), had no finite repayment term, and did not treat merchant bankruptcy as an automatic default. Because repayment was not absolutely required regardless of business performance, the agreements were not loans and could not be usurious.¹ The judge acknowledged that the rates and restrictive reconciliation process were “troubling” but held they did not convert the agreements into loans.²

LCF Group v. Fields

Not every LCF enforcement action has succeeded. In LCF Group, Inc. v. Fields, decided August 29, 2022, a Nassau County judge refused to confirm an arbitration award the company had won.

The underlying deals involved LCF paying $25,000 total to purchase future receivables ($10,000 on one agreement and $15,000 on another). After the merchant defaulted, an arbitrator awarded LCF $106,624.35, more than four times what the company had advanced.³ Judge Conrad D. Singer found the award “irrational and illogical,” saying it lacked “even a barely colorable justification for the outcome reached.” The arbitrator had given no explanation for how default fees and attorney fees calculated as one-third of the total balance produced that number from a $25,000 investment.⁴

The court noted that judicial review of arbitration awards is “extremely limited” but that courts retain the power to reject awards that are irrational or violate public policy. The “vast disparity” between what the merchant received and what he was ordered to pay crossed that line. The petition to confirm was denied in full, even though the merchant had not opposed it.³

Mazzoni Center v. LCF Group

The most public LCF dispute grew out of a financial crisis at a Philadelphia LGBTQ health nonprofit. In September 2024, the Mazzoni Center’s Executive Financial Officer, Rachelle Tritinger, signed merchant cash advance agreements with LCF Group for $234,570 and with FundKite (also known as AKF, Inc.) for $479,815. The center’s leadership found out the same day and fired her on September 12, 2024.⁵

On November 5, 2024, the Mazzoni Center sued both funders in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, bringing RICO claims and seeking a declaratory judgment that the agreements were unenforceable usurious loans entered without proper corporate authorization.⁶ The center said both companies had asserted UCC liens on its accounts receivable, diverting payments from third parties including the City of Philadelphia, and warned in court filings of a “true risk of bankruptcy.”⁷

The center moved for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop all collection activity. On November 12, 2024, after an evidentiary hearing, Judge Karen Spencer Marston denied the request, finding the center had not shown a likelihood of success. She applied the same three-factor analysis used in Singh, concluding that the agreements contained reconciliation provisions, lacked finite terms, and did not treat bankruptcy as automatic default.⁸ She also indicated Mazzoni’s claim that Tritinger had lacked authority to sign was “unlikely to succeed in court.”⁹ On November 27, 2024, the Mazzoni Center voluntarily dismissed the federal suit without prejudice.⁶

LCF’s Breach of Contract Suit Against Mazzoni

LCF then went on the offensive. The company sued the Mazzoni Center for breach of contract, seeking $493,356.25 total: $367,535 for breach of the agreement, $5,035 in default and insufficient-funds fees, and $120,821.25 in attorney fees. On April 8, 2025, LCF filed a motion for summary judgment. As of April 2025 reporting, that motion had not been decided. If denied, the case is scheduled for trial on May 11, 2026.¹⁰

Collection Practices at Issue

Across these cases, court filings describe a common set of LCF collection tools: pre-signed confessions of judgment, UCC liens on business receivables, bank account freezes, and property liens against merchants who fall behind.¹ An adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court, Jar 259 Food Corp. v. The LCF Group, Inc. (identified in filings as “Last Chance Funding Group, Inc.”), attached sample confession of judgment and affidavit of default documents as exhibits; that case was dismissed without prejudice in 2023.¹¹

How Courts Are Drawing the Line

The LCF cases sit inside a wider fight over the legal status of merchant cash advances. New York’s civil usury limit is 16%, and its criminal usury threshold is 25%.¹² Other MCA providers have faced enormous state judgments, including a $77 million judgment against Richmond Capital Group in February 2024¹³ and a judgment over $1 billion against Yellowstone Capital in January 2025, which permanently barred that company from the MCA business.

LCF has so far avoided that kind of regulatory action. The Singh and Mazzoni rulings both concluded that LCF’s contract terms (reconciliation provisions, no fixed repayment term, no automatic default upon bankruptcy) kept the transactions on the “purchase” side of the loan-versus-receivable line. Fields is the counterweight: even when the underlying agreement holds up, an individual enforcement result can be thrown out if the numbers become irrational. And the ground is still shifting. In a May 2025 bankruptcy ruling from the Southern District of New York, a court authorized the clawback of more than $3 million in MCA payments from a different provider after finding the reconciliation process was “illusory” and the agreements were actually loans.¹⁴

1
CaseMine. Singh v. The LCF Grp., Index No. 601297-23
2
Lundin PLLC. Court Rejects Claim That Merchant Cash Advance Agreement Was an Usurious Loan
3
New York Courts. LCF Group, Inc. v. Fields, Index No. 605616/2022
4
Caselaw FindLaw. LCF Group, Inc. v. Fields
5
Philadelphia Inquirer. Mazzoni Center LGBTQ Health Agency Layoffs
6
CourtListener. Mazzoni Center v. LCF Group, Inc.
7
Philadelphia Inquirer. Mazzoni Center Lawsuits FundKite LCF Loan Companies
8
Midpage. Mazzoni Center v. LCF Group, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-05921
9
EPGN. Mazzoni Center’s Dire Financial Situation
10
EPGN. Mazzoni Center Funding Lawsuit Takes Next Steps
11
PACER Monitor. Jar 259 Food Corp. v. The LCF Group, Inc.
12
Fintech and Digital Assets. NY Attorney General Secures $1 Billion Judgment for Illegal Loans Misrepresented as Merchant Cash Advances
13
New York Attorney General. Attorney General James Announces Historic Judgment Against Predatory Lender
14
Eversheds Sutherland. Preference Pitfalls for Merchant Cash Advances: Lessons From the Southern District of New York