Key legal question
Whether the appellants unlawfully accepted public deposits as a group under banking law
Extracted holding
Yes. Their coordinated treuhand and management structure amounted to group-based acceptance of public deposits and a banking-law violation.
Extracted reasoning
The entities acted in an economically and organizationally intertwined manner, pooled client funds, and were coordinated toward a single investment plan; formal treuhand labels could not defeat the economic reality.