What to know about Angel Rich, the lauded fintech founder sentenced to years in prison

A DC tech founder who last month was sentenced for vehicular manslaughter could lose ownership of her companies due to defaulting on a loan, though that case is still pending and no one involved would speak on the record. 

Angel Rich is a fintech entrepreneur who Forbes once compared to Steve Jobs. Her companies, which include the neobank CreditRich and financial literacy edtech WealthyLife, have gained wide acclaim. Last summer, a jury found her guilty of causing a deadly crash.

Technical.ly started looking into the situation after sources tipped us that Rich’s sentencing was generating a lot of online chatter among former colleagues and investors. What we found was full of conflicting information, and some touted investments do not show up in SEC filings. We’re laying out what we know here to provide a point of reference.

On April 29, 2023, Rich was speeding on a highway in Maryland while under the influence, court documents show. She was found to have caused a fatal accident involving a 64-year-old man who was driving to work. Rich was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but three years suspended, meaning she’ll serve up to three years of incarceration and then be placed on supervised probation. 

Over the last 15 years, Rich started several businesses and organizations in the DC region, including a HBCU-focused golfing nonprofit, and secured partnerships for her startups with financial giants Visa and Experian. She also received recognition from the Biden administration, according to posts on her Instagram account, which has half a million followers.  

She’s published two books — History of the Black Dollar and Black Woman Politics — and between 2018 and 2022 worked in DC government as vice chair of the Financial Literacy Council. 

But ownership of some of her companies, including CreditRich, may be transferred to Jackson Financial Group in White Plains, Maryland, after Rich used them as collateral, according to a promissory note (a legally binding document for a loan) in court documents obtained by Technical.ly.

A ‘$100M raise’ that doesn’t show up

Founded in 2020, CreditRich lets users who pay a $9.99 monthly fee automatically have the spare change rounded up from their purchases go towards their debts. It works in partnership with Experian and with Visa, according to its website.

The company was born out of Rich’s own experience graduating from Hampton University in Virginia with a 444 credit score and $180,000 in student loans, she’s said in news interviews and speeches. 

“With all of that debt, I had to take a step back,” Rich told the crowd during a 2023 speech at DC Startup and Tech Week, “and understand what I needed to do to not only get out of that debt, but to help other people not have the experience.” 

Private market data firm PitchBook lists a $100 million funding raise for CreditRich in April 2025. The raise was originally listed as being in April 2023, and was associated with WealthyLife, but after Technical.ly made inquiries, it was changed. It was based on a mention in a February 2025 edition of the “Fintech Is Femme” newsletter, per PitchBook PR specialist Amy Warmenhoven. In that newsletter, the author promotes Rich as an upcoming keynote speaker and includes the boast that the neobank had raised a $100 million Series B, bringing it to a $1 billion valuation.

Rich also mentioned $100 million during a talk at DC Startup and Tech Week 2024, saying she’d recently opened a Series B round for that amount with an unnamed lead investor.

Technical.ly could not find an SEC filing to back up the $100 million CreditRich raise, or one nearing this magnitude for any of Rich’s businesses. There is one SEC filing from 2017 for about $200,000, associated with Rich and cofounder Courtney Keen under the Wealth Factory brand name. Keen did not respond to requests for comment. 

According to the CreditRich website, Wealth Factory is a “conglomeration of brands” housing CreditRich, WealthyLife and CreditStacker, a financial literacy game cited in the Forbes story that appears to no longer exist. 

In 2021, Rich raised undisclosed funds for WealthyLife from underrepresented-founder focused VC Backstage Capital, per PitchBook, but none of Rich’s businesses are listed as a portfolio company on its website. Backstage Capital did not respond to inquiries

Before that, PitchBook lists WealthyLife reporting a $35,000 seed round in 2014, a $10,000 grant from JP Morgan Chase in 2016 and $125,000 via the Accelerate Baltimore program in 2017, among other small checks. 

Accelerate Baltimore was one of nearly 10 accelerators and incubators Rich and/or Keen took part in over a decade, according to PitchBook listings and Rich’s LinkedIn page, including programs led by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, Village Capital and Techstars. Rich also lists being a part of an accelerator with 43 North in New York, though PR director Christian Gaddis told Technical.ly this month he could not find a record of her participation.

A $50k loan with a monumental interest rate

Documents, social media posts and background conversations suggest that over the past year, Rich was aggressively seeking additional funding for her companies — both before and after she was found guilty of the fatal DUI last summer.

In November, Rich requested help getting introduced to investors for a bridge round to alleviate costs, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Founding partner at SF’s Cake Ventures Monique Woodard commented on a LinkedIn post that she’d received a request from Rich for a Series A extension just a few weeks before the January sentencing.

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A year prior to the sentencing, in January 2025, Rich signed a 3-month loan agreement with Jackson Financial Group, care of Tayvon Jackson, according to Maryland Charles County Circuit Court documents. 

The terms were not favorable to Rich: The principal is listed at $50,000 and the interest $142,000 — a 284% rate for the few months, or a 3.84 factor rate (an alternative to annual percentage yield for short term loans). That’s unusual; thin-credit business loans last year typically ranged between a 1.03 to 1.52 factor rate, according to BankRate. 

There’s also little clarity on the lender. Jackson Financial Group, which is suing Rich for repayment or transfer of ownership of the companies she put up for collateral, does not appear to have a website and is not in good standing with the state of Maryland after failure to submit an annual report, per the state’s taxation and assessments department. Its lawyer in the lawsuit, Jason DeLoach, did not respond to inquiries. 

Rich identifies herself as the sole owner of the businesses outlined as collateral, which include the Wealth Factory (the umbrella company that includes CreditRich and others) and Black Tech Matters, a social impact organization with its last event listed in 2023.

The most recent hearing for the loan default was held in early January, following a motion to strike by Rich because the complaint for the case was filed by Jackson himself, not a lawyer, according to court documents. A judge declined Rich’s motion, and the case remains open. 

A few weeks after that, Rich was sentenced for the vehicular manslaughter conviction. 

If you have information about the state of CreditRich, WealthyLife and Rich’s other ventures, or would like to talk about this story, please email dc@technical.ly.