SEC v. Ismael Zarco Sanchez and 16 others (ponzi schemes, 2024)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 4, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In March 2024 the SEC charged Gabriel Ochoa, Dulce Ochoa and 15 others. The complaint charges 17 leaders of the CryptoFX network over a $300 million crypto Ponzi scheme that drew more than 40,000 mainly Latino investors, following the 2022 emergency action against its two principals. Only Serrano and Taffinder settled, subject to court approval, for over $68,000 combined; the rest are pending.

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 March 14, 2024 as release LR-25949. The complaint charges 17 leaders of the CryptoFX network over a $300 million crypto Ponzi scheme that drew more than 40,000 mainly Latino investors, following the 2022 emergency action against its two principals. Only Serrano and Taffinder settled, subject to court approval, for over $68,000 combined; the rest are pending.

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.

This matter is at the allegation stage. Nothing in the regulator's filing has been proven, and the respondents are entitled to the presumption that it has not been.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on SEC pages. The SEC litigation-release index, which runs through LR-26664, has no later release naming these defendants. The release states that two of the defendants, Serrano and Taffinder, consented to final judgments subject to court approval and agreed to pay a little over $68,000 combined; no later SEC page showing entry of those judgments, or any outcome for the other defendants, was found.

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. 2024-03-14 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
• SEC Complaint

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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.