SEC v. John L. Shipley (ponzi schemes, 2016)

Settled

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In August 2016 the SEC settled proceedings against John L. Shipley of Bossier City, Louisiana, an unregistered sales agent for Virtual Concierge Machine contracts issued by JCS Enterprises and T.B.T.I., companies sued in 2014 for a Ponzi scheme. He is barred and owes $366,678 in disgorgement, $15,822 in interest and a $7,500 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$7.5k

Disgorgement

$367k

Prejudgment interest

$15.8k

Total relief

$390k

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 order finds that Shipley sold the contracts as an unregistered broker for transaction-based pay, and orders cease and desist and an industry bar. It recounts that the issuers raised at least $60 million and paid earlier investors with newer investors' money.

The record held the penalty and interest but not the $366,678 disgorgement. His finding is the unregistered selling, not running the scheme.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the order describes the products he sold as a Ponzi scheme operated by others. That is a seller-of-a-third-party-scheme tag. 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. 2016-08-16 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

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 order

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.