September 10, 2026 – LOS ANGELES, CA – An Inglewood woman has been arrested on a 15-count federal grand jury indictment charging her with defrauding venture capital funds out of more than $13 million by lying about her 
credentials and her now-defunct tax compliance startup company’s revenue, then using investors’ money to purchase a home, a Tesla, and pay for her wedding in the Caribbean, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.
Shiloh Luckey, 42, a.k.a. “Shiloh Johnson,” was arrested on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before she attempted to board a cruise ship for a vacation. Luckey was released on bond in the Southern District of Florida and is expected to appear in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
Luckey is charged with nine counts of securities fraud, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and two counts of money laundering.
According to the indictment returned on September 1, Luckey founded the Los Angeles-based ComplYant App Inc. in 2019 and presented it as a tax compliance startup company that offered services to small businesses to help them navigate complex tax regulations in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. Luckey was ComplYant’s CEO and exerted managerial control over the company.
From September 2020 to September 2023, Luckey defrauded investors by promoting ComplYant as having existing customers and a significant recurring revenue stream. As part of the alleged scheme, Luckey persuaded victims to invest in the company by presenting them with pitch decks, investor materials, and updates that falsely inflated ComplYant’s revenue, customer base, subscriptions, and cash reserve balances.
Luckey also induced victims to invest by lying to them and representing that she was a licensed certified public accountant (CPA) with deep expertise in tax management, accounting, and compliance, when, in fact, she has never been a licensed CPA.
Relying on these false statements, pretenses, and misrepresentations, victims invested millions of dollars into ComplYant under the belief it was a promising start-up based on Luckey’s representations.
Luckey then used a portion of these funds to pay for personal expenses, including the purchase of her residence, the purchase of a Tesla automobile, and to pay her wedding on the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
By September 2023, ComplYant experienced severe liquidity issues and ceased operations, causing the investors to lose their investments.
In total, Luckey fraudulently obtained at least $13.3 million from her victims, with the victims losing their entire investments.
The indictment further alleges that, in September and October of 2022, Luckey engaged in a check kiting scheme to purchase her Inglewood home by intentionally writing a bad $1.5 million check from a ComplYant account with insufficient funds, depositing it into another ComplYant account at a different bank, and wiring the money to buy her home before the first bank realized the check was worthless.
Luckey then paid off the negative balance caused by her check kiting scheme by repaying the negative bank account balance with fresh proceeds from her securities fraud.
An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
If convicted of all charges, Luckey would face a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison on the bank fraud count, up to 20 years in federal prison for each securities fraud and wire fraud count, and a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering count.
The FBI is investigating this matter.
Assistant United States Attorney Andrew M. Roach of the Major Frauds Section is prosecuting this case.
Source: DOJ Release