SEC v. Edward Lee Moody, Jr. (ponzi schemes, 2019)

Judgment entered

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In June 2019 the SEC announced final judgments from the Eastern District of Virginia against investment adviser Edward Moody and his firm CM Capital Management for a nearly $5 million, nine-year Ponzi scheme. Moody agreed to $3,025,067 of disgorgement and $32,181 of interest, deemed satisfied by criminal forfeiture and restitution, and an industry bar; he was sentenced to 13 years.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$3m

Prejudgment interest

$32.2k

Total relief

$3.1m

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 SEC announced the judgments on June 21, 2019 (LR-24508): a default judgment against CM Capital and a settled judgment against Moody on June 13, 2019. Moody pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud investors, admitting he spent money he said he would invest. Both are permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud provisions, and an administrative proceeding (3-19212) barred Moody. The 13-year sentence is 156 months.

The record omitted the disgorgement, the bar and the firm as a defendant.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

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. 2019-06-21 Litigation release published

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

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.