Pelorus Capital, based in Newport Beach, is an investment manager that is privately held. Its website discusses the company, but it never says why it is named Pelorus, which is a navigational tool for mariners. The “About” page discusses its ratings by Egan-Jones and the number of funded loans (73). It also shares a timeline that suggests it was the first dedicated cannabis lender in 2016. In 2025, it launched the Pelour Growth Fund. NCV Media has covered the company extensively since 2018, when it was known as the Pelorus Equity Group. Our coverage included two interviews, including one about why it wanted to stay private and another in 2022 about the evolution of its lending program.
Pelorus Capital Group captured our attention because it is paying for advertisements on Reels, and I saw one that discussed the “17% yield” available to accredited investors. Meta indicates that it has seven ads that are active right now, all launched in August. None of them discuss the industry that they serve: cannabis. We are shifting away from coverage of this industry, but we have written here about companies being aggressive with investors as they prospect for money for direct management or AI software sales. There is a very large trend of aggressive outreach to investors, and what Pelorus is doing appears to be quite aggressive.
What Pelorus Capital Is
Pelorus launched in 2010 and transitioned to cannabis in 2016. In 2021, it had financed 59 transactions totaling $243 million in the sector with 25 loans paid off. In 2022, it reported 34 payoffs with 32 assets worth $300 million. It launched the Pelorus Fund, a mortgage REIT, in 2018. The company is not registered with the SEC. As a private company, it does not file information about itself.
The two founders of Pelorus were Dan Leimel, its CEO, and Rob Sechrist, its President. One person not on the Pelorus team is Travis Goad, who was a third managing partner. He joined the company in 2020 and departed in 2024. In 2025, Pelorus Capital issued a press release about a favorable arbitration ruling against him thirteen months after his resignation. There is an investor action center that id dedicated to removing management that shares lots of negative information about Pelorus. Besides Travis Goad resigning, former CFO Tyler Greif left as well.
How Pelorus Has Done
The website discusses itself as a “top-performing asset manager” in the cannabis sector, but is it? It’s very difficult to tell due to the fact that it is a private company. The website doesn’t provide any information that can help potential investors to see how it has done. The last time its “insights” page was updated was in late 2022. It sure has been quiet! The company has social media, including a LinkedIn profile, an X.com handle and an Instragram page. Most of these have been very quiet recently, and none will help investors to learn much about the company.
The company was issuing a lot of press releases in 2020 through 2022, but it hasn’t issued one in a while (almost four years now), at least according to its own website. That last press release was about a $45.5 million debt financing to Terrascend (TSNDF), and this loan was replaced by the company in July 2025. This was an early repayment that required TerrAscend to pay Pelorus $233K.
Looking at some of the news from a few years ago, including some that are not on the Pelorus website for 2023 but are available here), it is clear that Pelorus was involved with a bunch of failing companies. These include Transcanna Holdings in Canada and StateHouse Holdings (Harborside). We warned about TransCanna Holdings in 2019. It’s not too difficult to find failures in the cannabis industry, but one needs to visit the Transcanna website at www.TransCanna.com for some fun! I guess that Leimel and Sechrist didn’t see our article in 2022 when Pelorus loaned it $15.8 million at 14%.
Why Investing in Pelorus Capital Could Be Dangerous
The company has been promoting itself aggressively on Reels. The ads discuss lending to an area that is limited in access to bank capital, but it never uses the word “cannabis” in these ads. There is a lack of information available regarding the company, its funds and the assets, and there has been turnover. There were four publicly-traded cannabis REITs a few years ago, and they have melted down. Two of them are no longer REITs, as they have become BDCs or are merging with a BDC. Here is the price action since late 2021 for each of them:
Pelorus plays in a dangerous world, and investors should not assume that what it says so optimistically will work out.
