Aspire Wealth Advisory Group review: Scam? aspire-wag.com

Note: Provisional rating — subject to revision

📋 Aspire Wealth Advisory Group at a Glance

Website	aspire-wag.com
Brand domain	aspirewealthadvisorygroup.com — redirects to the hyphenated abbreviation
Domain created	July 2026 — roughly three months before review
Legal entity	Aspire Wealth Advisory Group, LLC — New York LLC, formed August 2025
SEC registration	Approved 19 November 2025 — via the related-adviser exemption, Rule 203A-2(b)
CRD / SEC file no.	338618 / 801-134595
Majority owner	AIGH II, LLC — 75% or more — itself owned by Joshua M. Goldberg, founder of G2 Investment Partners
Founder's own stake	Indirect, 10–25%, through Cornucopia Enterprises, LLC
Employees	1
Filed assets under management	$6,165,207 — all discretionary
Clients / accounts	2 clients / 3 accounts
Custodian	Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (sole)
Fees	0.50%–1.50% of AUM, negotiable; planning $500–$2,000/month
Minimum	None stated for assets or fee
Disclosed discipline	None — firm and individuals
Analyst rating	★ 2.0 / 5.0 — Proceed With Caution (provisional)

Website Under Review: aspire-wag.com

Domain Creation Date: July 2026, per WHOIS. That is three months before this review, and eight months after the firm's SEC registration. The domain the press release links — aspirewealthadvisorygroup.com — redirects to it. "WAG" abbreviates a name that already contains four words.

Corporate History: The LLC was formed in New York in August 2025. Cornucopia Enterprises, LLC was registered on 19 August 2025; AIGH II, LLC on 12 September 2025. SEC registration was approved on 19 November 2025. The public website and the launch press release both arrived in July 2026.

Ownership: Form ADV Schedule A lists AIGH II, LLC at 75% or more and Cornucopia Enterprises, LLC at 10%–25%, with Edward S. Karan and Dana S. Federbush as indirect owners of Cornucopia. AIGH II is owned by Joshua M. Goldberg (CRD 2903327). The named founder is a minority holder in his own firm.

Regulatory Basis: The firm is SEC-registered under Rule 203A-2(b), the related-adviser exemption — the provision that exists because a small adviser is tied to a larger registered one. The related adviser is G2 Investment Partners Management LLC (CRD 163921). Both list 1 Rockefeller Plaza, Floor 23; that is G2's suite.

Filed Asset Base: $6,165,207 across three discretionary accounts and two clients — one high-net-worth client at $5,829,074 and one at $336,133. Asset mix at year end: 61% mutual funds/RICs, 38% exchange-traded equity, 1% pooled vehicles. One employee. Notice filings in New York and Texas only.

Overall Risk Assessment: Moderate. The operator is real and properly registered, and nothing in the record suggests misconduct. The risk is not fraud — it is scale mismatch: a three-account firm whose marketing describes an institution.

Aspire Wealth Advisory Group Review: Credentialed Founder, Unproven Firm

Aspire Wealth Advisory Group, LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser at 1 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. Its founder, Edward S. Karan, holds the CFA and CFP® designations, graduated with honors from Wharton as a Joseph Wharton Scholar, and spent roughly two decades at Citi, most recently as a Managing Director and Head of Institutional Sales at Citi Global Wealth at Work.

That résumé holds up. A 2024 Citi Wealth at Work brochure hosted by Thomson Reuters names him in that exact role, and the Hebrew Free Loan Society's own leadership page confirms the Wharton honor and his board seat. There is no disciplinary history on the firm or on any individual. There is no minimum account size and no minimum fee.

What does not hold up is the scale. The site sells "comprehensive wealth management" to "individuals and families with growing financial complexity," a personal-CFO service, and — in the July 2026 press release — a launch "with over $100 million in assets under management." The most recent Form ADV, signed 30 March 2026, reports $6,165,207 across three accounts. No amendment filed since supports the larger number.

So the honest description is a well-credentialed solo adviser with two clients, wrapped in the presentation of an established multi-family office. We assign a provisional 2.0/5.0. The credentials are real, which keeps this off one star. The paperwork is thin in the places that protect a client, which keeps it off three.

🚩 Key Red Flags About aspire-wag.com

1. A "$100 million" launch claim against a $6.16 million filing

The press release of 8 July 2026 — distributed through the paid wire EIN Presswire via an agency called Magnitude — announces the firm's "official public launch with over $100 million in assets under management."

Part 1, Item 5.F of the Form ADV signed 30 March 2026 states $6,165,207, all discretionary, three accounts. Third-party trackers record three ADV filings, the latest reported 31 March 2026. Nothing filed after the launch substantiates the figure the launch was built on.

There are innocent explanations — pipeline, committed capital, related-party assets. But an adviser's AUM is a filed number, and this one moved by a factor of sixteen in a press release without a corresponding amendment.

2. The founder owns a minority of his own firm, and the site barely says so

Schedule A is unambiguous. AIGH II, LLC holds 75% or more. AIGH II is owned by Joshua M. Goldberg, founder of the G2 Investment Partners hedge fund. Karan's interest runs indirectly through Cornucopia Enterprises at 10%–25%, alongside Dana S. Federbush.

Goldberg has a team page on the site. It reads "Biography pending." It is not linked from the homepage. Neither is the page for Jacob Doft, co-founder of Highline Capital, which says the same thing. Two of the six people the site presents are placeholders, and the man who controls the company is one of them.

The July 2026 release calls Karan "founder and CEO" and never mentions G2 or Goldberg. The privacy notice does name G2 — as an affiliate. The website does not.

3. "SEC-registered" here means the related-adviser exemption

A firm with $6.2 million would ordinarily be state-registered. Aspire is on the SEC register under Rule 203A-2(b) because it is tied to G2, which is why the two share an address and a floor.

The exemption is legitimate and common. It also means SEC registration says less about the firm's own scale than a reader would assume — the registration exists because of the parent's size, not Aspire's.

4. The disclosures page is a placeholder

The site's disclosures page says, verbatim: "Placeholder, full disclosure text pending compliance review."

That page went live in July 2026, eight months after SEC registration and behind a paid press push. It is still a stub.

5. The ADV and CRS exist but the site has no footer

/form-adv and /form-crs are in the sitemap. There is no footer on any page. Nothing links to the Form ADV, the Form CRS, or the disclosures page — the only document linked anywhere is a privacy-notice PDF buried in body copy.

A prospective client has to guess the URL to read the documents that describe the fees, the conflicts and the complaint route.

6. Four contradictions inside a single filed brochure

Item 5.B says fees are deducted or billed "monthly in advance." Item 5.D says the firm bills "monthly in arrears."

Item 4 says representatives may be licensed insurance agents "in their individual capacities" and cross-refers to Item 10.C. Item 10.B says plainly that neither the firm nor its representatives are licensed insurance agents — and Item 10.C does not discuss insurance.

Item 18.A states clients are not required to pay more than $1,200 six months in advance, which sits awkwardly beside monthly advance billing. And Item 5.A still carries the drafter's own note to himself: "(i.e., does not charge for intra-quarter additions or withdrawals-revise as necessary)."

7. Item 11 answers "yes" while no disclosure pages are filed

Part 1 answers yes to items 11.C(1)–(5) and 11.D(1)–(4) — false statement or omission, investment-law violations, regulatory orders, licence denials, penalties.

No Regulatory Action disclosure pages accompany them. Item 9 of the brochure and the Form CRS both report a clean record, and third-party trackers read the firm as having no disclosures. The two records do not match, and nobody has reconciled them.

8. The sub-adviser's own CIO sits on the advisory board

Investment management is outsourced. The brochure names Obsidian CIO LLC (CRD 289000) as an Independent Manager, and the firm pays Obsidian's fee out of its own advisory fee — a disclosed conflict, and one that cuts the client's way.

Obsidian's Managing Partner and CIO, Joseph Halpern, is simultaneously listed on Aspire's site as an advisory board member. So is Goldberg, the 75% owner. Advisory board compensation is disclosed nowhere; the press release footnotes only that Naz Vahid is unpaid and not a client, which by omission implies the others may be paid.

9. The name is already taken — repeatedly

CRD 307098 is a different SEC-registered firm carrying the aliases "Aspire Wealth Advisory, LLC," "Aspire Wealth Advisory" and "Aspire Wealth Advisors, LLC," with its own domain and LinkedIn. Forbes separately carries "Aspire Wealth Advisors" and "Aspire Wealth Group."

The new entrant chose the most crowded name in the category and then a domain — aspire-wag.com — that abbreviates it into something unrecognizable, while its own brand domain redirects away. Search results for the firm's name are already diluted by unrelated companies.

10. No numbers anywhere on the site

There is not a single performance figure, client count, asset figure or tenure statistic on the public pages. The three "planning scenarios" are explicitly hypothetical and say so.

"Institutional-caliber portfolio management" is the central claim, and the founder's background is institutional sales — the actual investing is sub-advised. That is a legitimate model. It is not the model the homepage describes.

Smaller issues worth noting

The Cash Management block reads "a range of a range of liquidity-focused options," repeated on two pages. The privacy notice still contains an unfilled "[FIRM]" template token. The site's stated client types (individuals, families) do not match the brochure's (individuals, business entities, trusts, estates) or the Form CRS's ("retail investors"), and third-party trackers describe the firm as serving pooled and ERISA clients. A podcast billing calls Karan "CFP, CPA"; the site and the ADV only claim CFA and CFP®. Individually trivial, collectively a sign of loose control.

Is aspire-wag.com Safe to Use?

Yes, in the narrow sense: it is a real registered adviser with a real human being behind it, assets at a major custodian, no disciplinary history, and no minimum. Nothing here suggests the money is at risk in the way an offshore broker's would be.

The question is fit, not safety. A visitor sees Rockefeller Plaza, Wharton, CFA, CFP® and a "$100 million" launch and reasonably assumes an established institution with a team. In practice there is one employee, the founder is his own chief compliance officer, three accounts exist, the majority owner is unnamed on the homepage, and the compliance documents are a placeholder and two orphaned URLs.

Before signing, obtain in writing: the current Form ADV Part 2A and Form CRS; which entity contracts with you; how much of your portfolio Obsidian will manage and what Obsidian charges inside the fee; whether fees bill in advance or arrears; and the succession plan for a one-person firm.

📈 What Would Change Our Rating

This is a provisional rating based on evidence available on 29 October 2026. Most of the fixes below are a week of work, and the firm controls all of them:

• File an ADV amendment that substantiates — or retires — the $100 million figure
• Finish the disclosures page and add a footer linking ADV, CRS and disclosures
• Publish the two pending biographies and put Goldberg on the homepage with his ownership stake
• Disclose whether advisory board members are compensated
• Resolve the advance/arrears, insurance-agent and Item 11 contradictions
• Publish client numbers, tenure and any track record, with dates

Finishing the disclosure items alone would move this to 3.0. Substantiating the AUM claim and publishing any real performance record would move it further.

⭐ Analyst Conclusion

We assign aspire-wag.com a provisional 2.0/5.0 because the credibility signals on the site are stronger than the evidence behind them, and because the paperwork fails in exactly the places a client relies on — fees, entities, conflicts and complaint routes.

The most telling detail is not the missing AUM. It is that a firm launched in July 2026 with a paid press release, a professional website and a former boss on its advisory board could not yet be bothered to write its own disclosures page, while the man who owns three-quarters of it appears on that site as a name with the words "Biography pending" underneath.

That is not misconduct. It is a firm still under construction, presented as though it were finished. The credentials justify watching it. They do not yet justify the presentation.

❓ aspire-wag.com FAQ

Is Aspire Wealth Advisory Group legit?

It is a genuinely SEC-registered investment adviser (CRD 338618) with a credentialed founder and no disciplinary history. It is also eight months old, has one employee and two clients, and its launch press release claims more assets than its filings show. Provisional rating: 2.0/5.0.

Is Aspire Wealth Advisory Group regulated?

It is registered with the SEC, but under the related-adviser exemption in Rule 203A-2(b), because it is tied to G2 Investment Partners Management LLC. It holds notice filings in New York and Texas only.

Does the founder own Aspire Wealth Advisory Group?

Not a majority. AIGH II, LLC holds 75% or more and is owned by Joshua M. Goldberg of G2 Investment Partners. Karan's interest is indirect at 10%–25% through Cornucopia Enterprises, LLC.

Does Aspire really manage $100 million?

Its July 2026 press release says so. Its most recent Form ADV, signed 30 March 2026, reports $6,165,207 across three accounts. No filing after the launch supports the larger figure.

How old is aspire-wag.com?

The domain was created in July 2026 — about three months before this review, and eight months after the firm's SEC registration. The domain used in the press release redirects to it.

Is aspire-wag.com safe to deposit with?

Assets are custodied at Charles Schwab, not held by the firm, and there is no disciplinary record. The verification work is confirming the contracting entity, the fee billing terms and how much of the portfolio is sub-advised before signing.

🔎 Sources and Verification

• aspire-wag.com — Homepage and service claims
• aspire-wag.com — About page and founder biography
• aspire-wag.com — Goldberg team page ("Biography pending")
• aspire-wag.com — Disclosures page (placeholder)
• SEC IAPD — Firm summary, registration date and notice filings
• Form ADV Part 1 — Schedules A and B, ownership, AUM, Item 11
• Form ADV Part 2A — Fees, conflicts, custody, brokerage
• Form CRS — Client relationship summary
• WHOIS — domain creation date
• Internet Archive — historical snapshots
• G2 Investment Partners — office address, 1 Rockefeller Plaza 23rd Floor
• SEC IAPD — G2 Investment Partners Management LLC (related adviser)
• SEC IAPD — unrelated firm with near-identical aliases
• EIN Presswire — launch release, 8 July 2026
• Thomson Reuters / Citi Wealth at Work — independent confirmation of the founder's title
• Hebrew Free Loan Society — leadership page, Wharton honor
• New York Department of State — AIGH II, LLC registration
• New York Department of State — Cornucopia Enterprises, LLC registration
• SEC IAPD — Joseph Halpern, Obsidian CIO

This review distinguishes company claims from independently verified facts. Ownership percentages, asset figures, client and account counts, employee count, custodian, fee ranges and the registration exemption are taken from Form ADV Parts 1 and 2A and the Form CRS filed with the SEC. The domain creation date is WHOIS data. The founder's Citi title is independently confirmed by a Citi document hosted by Thomson Reuters; the Wharton honor is confirmed by the Hebrew Free Loan Society. We did not independently verify the $100 million figure, the advisory board's compensation, or the claimed $2 billion of family assets attributed to the sub-adviser's CIO. SEC registration is not an endorsement, and a clean disciplinary record is not a performance record. This is a provisional rating, last verified 29 October 2026, and it may be revised if new evidence emerges.