SEC v. Homero Joshua Garza, GAW Miners and ZenMiner (ponzi schemes, 2015)

Settled

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The SEC's December 2015 case over the GAW Miners and ZenMiner bitcoin-mining scheme ended with a consent final judgment against Homero Joshua Garza on 4 October 2017 in the District of Connecticut. It orders $9,182,000 in disgorgement, deemed satisfied by criminal restitution, and $742,774 in interest. The two companies took a default judgment in June 2017 with a $1 million penalty each, and Garza pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$2m

Disgorgement

$9.2m

Prejudgment interest

$743k

Total relief

$11.9m

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 complaint, filed December 1, 2015 in the District of Connecticut, alleges the companies sold far more computing power than they owned, so returns to investors were paid from other investors' money, and that most of the more than 10,000 buyers never recovered their investment. It charges registration and antifraud violations.

The allegations are unproven and nothing had been ordered. The record listed only Garza.

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 2 June 2017 the court entered a default final judgment against GAW Miners and ZenMiner, jointly and severally ordering about $10.4 million in disgorgement and interest, plus a $1 million penalty on each company. On 4 October 2017 it entered a consent final judgment against Garza, enjoining him from further breaches of Securities Act Sections 5 and 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b), and ordering disgorgement of $9,182,000, deemed satisfied by the agreed restitution order in the criminal case, plus $742,774 in prejudgment interest. The SEC says this judgment resolves the litigation. Garza pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud on 20 July 2017; the releases do not give his sentence. The stored totals use Garza's disgorgement and interest and the companies' penalties; the companies' joint $10,384,099 is not split between disgorgement and interest, so it is not added.

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. 2015-12-01 Litigation release published
2. 2017-06-02 Default final judgment entered against GAW Miners and ZenMiner (D. Conn.)
3. 2017-10-04 Final judgment entered against Garza, resolving the litigation (D. Conn.)

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 23960 (final judgment against Garza)
• SEC litigation release 23852 (judgment against the two companies)
• Final judgment as to Homero Joshua Garza (4 Oct 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 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.