SEC v. Jason P. Wootten, et al. (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Settled

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In March 2021 the SEC charged Arizona sellers Jason Wootten and Ronald Stevenson and their companies with selling EquiAlt fund securities as unregistered brokers. On January 5, 2023 the court entered a consent judgment against Wootten enjoining him from the registration violations, and the SEC later barred him from the securities industry. The outcome for Stevenson and the two companies was not checked.

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 SEC announced the complaint on March 23, 2021 (LR-25059) in the District of Arizona. Sales ran from 2015 to 2020. EquiAlt had been sued in February 2020 for a Ponzi scheme raising over $170 million.

The record named the defendants as "Jason P. Wootten, et al."; all four are now listed. The tag is retained pending the lead's decision on unregistered sellers of third-party Ponzi products.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome. An SEC administrative order (Exchange Act Release 34-97096) records that on January 5, 2023 the Arizona court entered a judgment by consent permanently enjoining Wootten from violating Securities Act Sections 5(a) and 5(c) and Exchange Act Section 15(a)(1), and the Commission accepted his settlement offer and barred him from association with brokers, dealers, advisers and similar firms and from penny stock offerings. The SEC's whistleblower notice for the case also lists January 5, 2023 as the qualifying judgment date. Neither page states the disgorgement or penalty amounts, so no money is recorded. This covers Wootten only; Stevenson, American Financial Security and Family Tree Estate Planning were not checked, and the registration charges do not themselves allege that Wootten ran the Ponzi scheme at EquiAlt.

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. 2021-03-23 Litigation release published
2. 2023-01-05 Consent judgment entered against Wootten (SEC order 34-97096)

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 order 34-97096: Wootten barred (cites January 2023 consent judgment)
• SEC whistleblower notice 2023-011

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.