SEC v. Homero Joshua Garza (ponzi schemes, 2017)

Judgment entered

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In October 2017 a Connecticut federal court entered a final judgment against Homero Joshua Garza in the SEC's case over GAW Miners and ZenMiner, which the SEC said ran a Ponzi scheme using virtual currency mining contracts. It holds him liable for $9,182,000 of disgorgement, deemed satisfied by his criminal restitution, and $742,774 of interest.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$9.2m

Prejudgment interest

$743k

Total relief

$9.9m

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 SEC had charged Garza with an unregistered, fraudulent offering and a Ponzi scheme. The judgment permanently enjoins him from violating Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5, and Sections 5 and 17(a) of the Securities Act, and resolves the litigation. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in July 2017.

The record carried the disgorgement but omitted the interest.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes money from later investors being used to pay earlier ones. 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. 2017-10-04 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.