SEC v. Bin Hao and Qidian LLC (ponzi schemes, 2023)

Judgment entered

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In September 2023 the SEC charged Bin Hao and Qidian LLC over an alleged Ponzi-like note scheme. After bifurcated consent judgments in March 2025, a final judgment against Hao on March 5, 2026 set disgorgement of $1,526,484, interest of $475,201 and a $236,451 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$236k

Disgorgement

$1.5m

Prejudgment interest

$475k

Total relief

$2.2m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on September 29, 2023 as release LR-25867. The complaint alleges that Hao and his company raised about $10.3 million from at least 60 investors in the Chinese-American community, used millions of new investor dollars for Ponzi-like payments to prior investors, and that Hao took at least $793,267 for personal expenses. An officer-and-director bar is sought, not imposed.

This library tags the matter as a Ponzi scheme because the document describes returns to earlier investors paid from later investors' money, as alleged or found. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

The SEC reported on March 17, 2026 that the Southern District of Florida entered a final judgment against Hao on March 5, 2026. Earlier, on March 6, 2025, Hao and Qidian had consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to bifurcated judgments with permanent injunctions, leaving payment amounts to be set by the court; Hao also agreed to an officer-and-director bar. The final judgment orders Hao to pay disgorgement of $1,526,484, prejudgment interest of $475,201 and a civil penalty of $236,451, $2,238,136 in total.

The release states that this judgment concludes the SEC's litigation. It does not give separate monetary figures for Qidian.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Ponzi schemes — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2023-09-29 Litigation release published
2. 2026-03-05 Final judgment entered against Bin Hao

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release
• SEC litigation release reporting the outcome

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.