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Thiruvendran "Thiru" Vignarajah

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The profile

Chief executive of Capital Plus Financial, LLC from August 2021 through 2023; former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland. He took the job after the 2021 PPP round closed and ran the lender through the SBA's 2023 review.

Identity and role

Thiruvendran "Thiru" Vignarajah is a Baltimore trial lawyer, a former federal and state prosecutor, and a four-time candidate for Baltimore mayor and state's attorney. From August 2021 through the end of 2023 he was chief executive of Capital Plus Financial, LLC, the Bedford, Texas community development financial institution that originated loans for the fintech Blueacorn in the 2021 Paycheck Protection Program. Capital Plus is a subsidiary of Crossroads Systems, Inc. (later Crossroads Impact Corp.; OTCQX: CRSS). Eric Donnelly, who had run both companies, stayed on as chief executive of the parent.

Biography / career arc

Vignarajah is a Baltimore native and went to Woodlawn High School. He took a B.A. from Yale (1998) and a master's in medical ethics from King's College London (1999), worked at McKinsey & Company, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005, magna cum laude, as President of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit and for Justice Stephen Breyer (2006–2007).

He practiced at Arnold & Porter in Washington, then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland under Rod Rosenstein and as chief of the Major Investigations Unit at the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office. In January 2015 he became Deputy Attorney General of Maryland under Brian Frosh, where he was lead author of the state's guidelines against discriminatory profiling by police. Before Capital Plus he was a litigation partner in DLA Piper's Baltimore office.

He has run for office four times without winning a Democratic primary: state's attorney in 2018 and 2022, mayor in 2020 and 2024. He lost the 2022 primary to Ivan Bates on July 19, 2022, while he was running Capital Plus.

The company and its PPP/EIDL role

Capital Plus announced its partnership with Blueacorn on January 11, 2021. By the end of the program in May 2021 it ranked fourth among PPP lenders by number of loans approved that year, according to the House Select Subcommittee. Crossroads' fiscal-2021 disclosure (year to October 31, 2021) reports 472,036 PPP loans approved, $868.4 million in PPP administrative fees, $628.1 million in PPP processing-fee expense, and $238.9 million in common-equity distributions, all paid by July 31, 2021.

Maryland Matters reported on August 31, 2021 that Capital Plus had named Vignarajah its new chief executive; Crossroads announced the appointment formally on September 14, 2021, alongside an advisory agreement with Enhanced Capital Group.

The oversight fights came on his watch. The House Select Subcommittee's December 1, 2022 report said multiple lenders limited their oversight of fintech partners to "spot checks" conducted at random, and that Capital Plus "approved dubious loans to Blueacorn's founders but claimed not to have been aware that it issued these loans until months later." On December 8, 2022 the SBA said it had launched "a full investigation" of eight lenders, Capital Plus among them. Capital Plus signed a "Voluntary Agreement" for enhanced SBA supervision on January 6, 2023, and the SBA paused processing of its guaranty-purchase requests during the review. On August 28, 2023, according to Crossroads' audited statements, the SBA "concluded its investigation and review of Capital Plus with no material adverse findings" and resumed processing. In March 2023 Blueacorn filed an arbitration demand against Capital Plus for fees it said it was owed under their loan-service agreement; Capital Plus had accrued $80 million in fees due to Blueacorn and disputes that they are owed.

Their own relief

No PPP loan in Vignarajah's name appears in the SBA's public PPP loan-level data. Capital Plus took a PPP loan of its own: $376,800 from Simmons Bank, approved April 13, 2020, before his tenure.

No charge, fraud finding, civil judgment or enforcement action against Vignarajah arising from Capital Plus or the PPP appears in the court and agency records cited here.

Borrowers who said Capital Plus never funded their SBA-approved loans sued in Greathouse v. Capital Plus Financial (filed in the Eastern District of Arkansas in December 2021, transferred to the Northern District of Texas). The Texas complaint names Capital Plus, Crossroads, Donnelly and Robert Alpert; it does not name Vignarajah, and the conduct it describes predates his arrival. The court denied class certification on September 6, 2023.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Vignarajah became managing partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp's Baltimore office on January 1, 2024, joining from Capital Plus. He now runs his own firm, the Law Offices of Thiru Vignarajah in Baltimore, and has taught constitutional and administrative law as an adjunct at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland and the University of Baltimore. He entered the 2024 mayor's race and withdrew on May 1, 2024, endorsing Sheila Dixon. On February 23, 2026 Harvest Commercial Capital announced a merger with Crossroads Impact Corp.; the announcement does not mention him.

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