SEC v. Francisco Illarramendi, Highview Point and Michael Kenwood (ponzi schemes, 2017)

Judgment entered

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In September 2017 the SEC announced a final judgment against eight entities used by Francisco Illarramendi in his Ponzi scheme, ending the Connecticut case. Earlier that year the court ordered Illarramendi to pay about $25.8 million in disgorgement and a $1 million penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1m

Disgorgement

$25.8m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$26.8m

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 September 18, 2017 judgment enjoins Highview Point Partners and Michael Kenwood Capital Management and orders no disgorgement or penalties against the entities, because the receiver had distributed over $330 million to investors and most claimants recovered 92 or 100 percent of verified losses. Illarramendi is serving 13 years in prison.

The $25.8 million disgorgement in the record is Illarramendi's own, entered earlier in 2017; the $1 million penalty was missing. This is the later release on the matter in the January 2015 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.

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. 2017-09-19 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.

Same matter

The library links these 3 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.