SEC v. Brett M. Bartlett and others (ponzi schemes, 2023)

Judgment entered

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In May 2023 the SEC charged Brett Bartlett, his father-in-law Scott Miller and their companies over a $20.5 million offering fraud aimed largely at church members. The defendants did not respond, and on September 19, 2023 the court entered default judgments totalling $15,147,610.73, made up of $9,830,039.68 of disgorgement, $1,299,449.05 of interest and a $4,018,122 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$4m

Disgorgement

$9.8m

Prejudgment interest

$1.3m

Total relief

$15.1m

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 May 3, 2023 as release LR-25705. The complaint alleges that Bartlett, his father-in-law Miller and their companies raised at least $20.5 million from over 1,000 investors, many from a church, and made more than $11 million in Ponzi-like payments while sending $21 million in bad checks. Injunctions and officer-and-director bars are sought, not imposed; criminal charges were announced in a parallel case.

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.

A parallel criminal proceeding is referenced. Civil and criminal outcomes are recorded separately, because they resolve on different standards of proof.

The court entered default judgments on the SEC's motion after the clerk recorded defaults for Bartlett, Scott Miller, Dynasty Toys, 7M eGroup, Concept Management Company and Dynasty, Inc. for failing to respond. The judgments, filed September 19, 2023, permanently enjoin the defendants and set the same combined figures in each: disgorgement of $9,830,039.68 (allocated in three tranches jointly with other defendants), prejudgment interest of $1,299,449.05 and a civil penalty of $4,018,122, for $15,147,610.73 in all. I opened the judgments against Bartlett and Miller; the recorded figures are those in Bartlett's judgment, not a sum across defendants, to avoid double counting.

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. 2023-05-03 Litigation release published
2. 2023-09-19 Default final judgment as to Brett M. Bartlett and Scott A. Miller (C.D. Cal.)

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
• Final judgment as to Brett M. Bartlett
• Final judgment as to Scott A. Miller

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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.