SEC v. Capital Financial Partners, Allen and Daub: criminal charges (ponzi schemes, 2015)

Settled

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The SEC's April 2015 case over the athlete-loan Ponzi scheme run by Capital Financial Partners, William Allen and Susan Daub ended in a consent final judgment entered on 17 November 2017 in the District of Massachusetts. It orders $15,711,836 in disgorgement and $1,317,673.75 in interest, deemed satisfied by the criminal restitution order. Allen and Daub were each sentenced to six years in prison in the parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$15.7m

Prejudgment interest

$1.3m

Total relief

$17m

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

It says the criminal complaint of June 12, 2015 alleges the two collected investor money for athlete loans that were never made, including through forged loan documents, and for oversubscribed loans. In the civil case the court had frozen assets and granted emergency relief.

It concerns the same matter as the April 2015 Capital Financial Partners record.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes payments to earlier participants made from later participants' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

On 17 November 2017 the court entered a final judgment against Allen, Daub and their three Capital Financial entities, each of whom consented to it. The judgment bars them from further breaches of the Securities Act's Section 17(a) and the Exchange Act's Section 10(b), bars Allen and Daub from taking part in issuing or selling securities through entities they control, and holds the defendants jointly and severally liable for $15,711,836 in disgorgement and $1,317,673.75 in prejudgment interest. That obligation is deemed satisfied by the restitution order entered against Allen and Daub on 3 March 2017 in the criminal case, in which the SEC says each was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty. The judgment covers the named defendants; the four relief-defendant entities in the complaint were not separately checked.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary documents linked above. This page summarises the structured record and does not reproduce them.

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. 2015-06-15 Litigation release published
2. 2017-11-17 Final judgment entered against Allen, Daub and the Capital Financial entities (D. Mass.)

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 23991 (final judgments)
• Final judgment as to the Capital Financial defendants (17 Nov 2017)

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 4 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.