- July 19, 2025
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In early 2023, Patrick Britton-Harr reached out to a group of investors in his private jet membership company AeroVanti to request a loan.
The money, he told them, was to go toward the purchase of an aircraft known as N290BC.
The plane would be part of a growing fleet to be used by members of AeroVanti’s club, based, in part, in Sarasota. These were people who paid as much as $150,000 to get access to private planes whenever they needed it.
The club, Britton-Harr told just about anyone who’d listen, including the investors, was doing extraordinarily well at the time and in a statement trumpeting a new hire in March of that year he said revenue had grown 400% since launching in July 2021.
What many didn’t know was there were rumblings among some in and around AeroVanti that Britton-Harr was using money meant to operate the company for personal use.
Over the past couple of years, these allegations have been slowly been made public — and amplified — in multiple lawsuits, on a private Facebook group run by former club members and in conversations with former employees, members and vendors.
But a much better understanding of Britton-Harr's alleged actions while running AeroVanti was made public last week, when federal prosecutors in Maryland unsealed an indictment and charged him with fraud.
The 11-page indictment issued by a grand jury details how he allegedly took more than $14.7 million from the company to enrich himself in a scheme that prosecutors say involved lying to investors and members in order to keep the company running — and the money coming in.
The indictment for the first time digs deep into what Britton-Harr is alleged to have done as head of the air service company which operated in Sarasota and Annapolis, Maryland, and provides details for what so long were just accusations.
According to the indictment, Britton-Harr “devised and knowingly intended to devise an artifice to defraud (members), to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses and promises.”
Britton-Harr, who now lives in South Carolina, did not respond to a request for comment for this story and has not spoken to the Business Observer since June 2023.
That indictment is one of two unsealed May 28 against the 41-year-old Britton-Harr, who is also being prosecuted for allegations that a company he operated, Provista Health, fraudulently billed Medicare for COVID-19 screening tests across the country that were never performed.
Britton-Harr is charged with six counts of wire fraud in the AeroVanti case. In Medicare case, he is charged with five counts of health care fraud and one count of money laundering.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each wire fraud count and 10 years in prison on each health care fraud and money laundering count.
“Patrick Britton-Harr’s repeated crimes reveal a man with no moral compass motivated by pure greed,” William J. DelBagno, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore field office, says in statement announcing the dual indictments.
“His deceit and scheming resulted in a staggering amount of loss to American taxpayers and the public.”
In early 2023, Patrick Britton-Harr was still hailed as a rising star, at least publicly. He had received several awards locally and was featured in stories around the region and country about his business prowess.
Here was a man who, in that March 2023 hiring statement, vowed “to completely disrupt the private aviation model, proving that luxury travel can be delivered at a competitive price point and an incredible value.”
“Not only have we delivered upon that, but we’re positioned to continue to scale in an unprecedented manner both operationally and financially.”
In May, the company sponsored a car in a NASCAR race.
But, according to the indictment, from the start all wasn’t what it appeared to be — or how Britton-Harr presented it.
AeroVanti had gotten started selling Top Gun memberships for $150,000. These memberships provided guaranteed benefits for members, including 100 hours of prepaid flights.
The idea was that Top Gun members would be organized into five pools or groups of about 20 each. The company would then create a Maryland based LLC around each individual group.
The fees paid by the members were then put in escrow and could only be distributed for reasons set out in a written agreement. The primary reason for this set up, prosecutors quote the membership agreement in the indictment, was to “acquire and recondition (a specifically designated aircraft) to meet AeroVanti fleet standards.”
The titles to the aircrafts would also be put into escrow.
According to the rules set out in the membership agreement, any disbursal to AeroVanti had to be approved by an unnamed person identified in the indictment only as Individual 1. If the conditions were met, that person and Britton-Harr would then digitally sign the disbursal instructions so the money would be released.
But Britton-Harr had no intention of following the procedures and from the beginning intended to use the money for himself, prosecutors allege.
That meant “falsely representing” and “misleading Individual 1” about the reasons he sought to pull the money from the escrow accounts. He said the money would be used for buying, refurnishing or getting the title for aircraft, prosecutors allege, but instead he used it for “undisclosed or unauthorized purposes, including his own personal use.”
Between April 2022 and October 2022 — the same month he was in the Business Observer's annual 40 under 40 issue — Britton-Harr had 28 disbursals of escrowed money from the Top Gun funds deposited into two AeroVanti checking accounts he controlled.
The disbursals, according to the indictment, totaled about $14.75 million.
That money was then moved into checking accounts belonging to Britton-Harr and his wife, Tracy Deckman and used for rent payments, boat purchases, living expenses and jewelry, officials contend. (Deckman is not named in the indictment and is referred to as T.D. by prosecutors.)
Britton-Harr, in his Business Observer profile for 40-under-40, calls Deckman his mentor, saying in a questionnaire that she “has been fortunate or unfortunate however you want to look at it, to have been part of every one of my startup companies.
“The outside perspective that Tracy brings not only is it refreshing it’s always right.”
In the indictment, prosecutors document six of the alleged transfers from AeroVanti accounts to either Britton-Harr’s or Deckman’s account.
The first was on April 21, 2022, when Britton-Harr wired $100,000 from an account belonging to AeroVanti in his control to Deckman’s checking account.
A little over a month later, he is alleged to have wired another $100,000 to his own account. Of that, $65,000 was spent at a jewelry story in Pensacola.
Another $125,000 was moved into Britton-Harr’s checking account between June and August and used for the purchase of a boat name Permit. That was followed by $80,000 in an alleged transfer in August and September for the purchase of another boat.
A third boat, a yacht this time, prosecutors say, named Triple Lindy, was bought in September for $306,000. The money for that allegedly came from a $1 million transfer.
Britton-Harr is also alleged to have paid $30,000 from the funds for rent on a house in Tampa.
While the public was still praising Britton-Harr, it appears that by November 2022 some inside the company began to suspect something wasn’t right.
That’s when, according to the indictment, he invited Top Gun members to Sarasota after learning about an email sent to members claiming he was mishandling funds and mismanaging the company.
The indictment, and the most recent court filings, don’t disclose who sent the email or what happened at the meetings.
What is known is that not long after, Britton-Harr approached the group of investors to ask for the loan in what, prosecutors describe, as an effort to “conceal his scheme.”
The investors granted Britton-Harr that loan, for $1.5 million, April 2023.
What they didn’t know, and what federal prosecutors, allege Britton-Harr intentionally left out of his pitch, was that the company already owned N290BC, the aircraft he was seeking the loan for.
Not only that, AeroVanti was being sued for repossession of the plane’s logbooks and records, documents incredibly important when reselling an aircraft.
A short time later lawsuits, both federal and local, began to pile up.
Britton-Harr remained CEO of AeroVanti until July 2023.
He was replaced by Scott Hopes, a prominent local official having been both a Manatee County School Board member and county administrator. Hopes, with experience also in aviation, lasted until October of that year after failing to make any progress turning the company around.
Replacing Hopes was Britton-Harr’s brother Todd. Todd Britton-Harr lasted three days in the CEO role.
Todd resigned, he told the Business Observer in a May 2024 interview, after learning money meant to pay for legal expenses had not been paid out and that default judgements had been issued after the company failed to put up a defense. He also learned that an offer for investment funding was rescinded.
Then, in October 2023, Patrick Britton-Harr reappeared as CEO of what remained of the company.
A year later, facing contempt charges from a federal judge for selling a house in Annapolis, Maryland, four days after a $30 million judgment was filed against him and pocketing the proceeds, he announced AeroVanti was back in business.
He sent out an email laying out a plan to pay back those who lost money back. There is no word on how the plan is working.
