SEC v. Joseph Meli, et al. (ponzi schemes, 2018)

Settled

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In November 2018 the SEC announced that a federal court ordered Jessica Ingber Meli, wife of accused Ponzi schemer Joseph Meli and a relief defendant in the SEC case, to disgorge about $4 million including interest, partly satisfied by a forfeiture of an East Hampton house. Meli was sentenced to 78 months in a parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

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 judgment on November 9, 2018 (LR-24348); the case is in the Southern District of New York. The SEC charged Joseph Meli in January 2017 with running a Ponzi scheme that raised money for purchasing and reselling show tickets. His wife settled, with about $3.2 million deemed satisfied by the forfeiture so she owes about $840,000. The figure is disgorgement and interest combined, so no separate amount is recorded; litigation against Meli continued.

The record named the defendants as "Joseph Meli, et al."; both are now listed.

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.

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. 2018-11-09 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 6 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.