Verijet sold jet cards to fund its expansion — then liquidated owing cardholders $10.5M

Verijet, a Florida-based private jet charter operator, began flying in 2020 betting that single-engine Cirrus Vision Jet SF50s — one pilot, with push-button auto-land if the pilot was incapacitated — could sell private flying from $2,500 an hour, over 40% below very light jets like the Embraer Phenom 100 or HondaJet. Starting within 600 nautical miles of Orlando, founder Richard Kane expanded to California, Texas, the Northeastern US and Canada; by end-2022 Verijet ranked 30th among Part 135/91K operators in North America and was described as the 13th-largest private jet operator in the US.

The expansion was financed primarily by selling jet cards that promised fixed rates but did not guarantee availability. Lawsuits piled up from aircraft lessors, employees, vendors and consumers; cardholders said frequent flight cancellations had rendered their non-refundable cards effectively useless. In 2023 Kane briefly stepped down as CEO before returning months later, and a non-binding letter of intent to merge with a SPAC led by former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg collapsed within weeks when the SPAC's shareholders voted to liquidate the fund.

Kane announced an $85M Solaino infusion, a 2024 medical-flights pivot with an MOU with a First Nations family office, and alleged a former board member was forcing it toward bankruptcy as a takeover scheme. Court records told a different story: no cash in any bank account, a largest asset of a $2.4M insurance claim, and about $200 of furniture in a Sanford, Florida storage unit. The appointing judge, Migna Sanchez-Llorens, wrote that Verijet and Kane 'knowingly or recklessly failed to provide complete and current information and records to which the judgment creditor was entitled'.

After Kane's death from a heart attack on 2025-09-13, the company filed for Chapter 7 liquidation. Its liabilities totalled $38.7M, including numerous judgments, a $58,465 civil contempt order against Kane personally, and $10.5M in unused jet card deposits held for more than 80 customers — 39 of whom had balances exceeding $100,000.

$38.7M in liabilities including $10.5M of unused jet card deposits owed to more than 80 customers; 39 had balances over $100,000

Expansion was funded by non-refundable jet card sales with no availability guarantee, so every operational hiccup created owed-or-refund liabilities

Flight cancellations were frequent enough that cardholders alleged their cards were useless, drawing consumer lawsuits

Announced funding — the SPAC merger, the $85M Solaino infusion — did not hold up, leaving no cash cushion when lawsuits and judgments landed

The company and its CEO were found by a federal judge to have recklessly withheld records from a judgment creditor

Funding growth with non-refundable deposits for a service whose availability you cannot guarantee is a loan you take from your customers

As of October 2025 Verijet was in Chapter 7 liquidation, its fleet operations ended, with $10.5M of customer deposits among $38.7M in liabilities to be processed through the estate.