SEC v. Frank Lynold Mercado and Tiger Wolf Capital, LLC (ponzi schemes, 2024)

Settled

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In May 2024 the SEC announced a settlement with Frank Lynold Mercado and Tiger Wolf Capital, LLC. The complaint alleges that Mercado and his unregistered advisory firm raised over $1.4 million from more than 100 investors, paid existing investors with new money, and issued fake account statements. Both consented to injunctions subject to court approval with money relief to be set later, and Mercado to an officer-and-director bar.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 30, 2024 as release LR-26012. The complaint alleges that Mercado and his unregistered advisory firm raised over $1.4 million from more than 100 investors, paid existing investors with new money, and issued fake account statements. Both consented to injunctions subject to court approval with money relief to be set later, and Mercado to an officer-and-director bar.

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.

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. 2024-05-30 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.