SEC v. Manuel A. Romero (ponzi schemes, 2022)

Judgment entered

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In May 2022 the SEC announced a final judgment against Manuel Romero, former CFO of Professional Financial Investors, for his role in a Ponzi scheme that raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He consented to an injunction, an officer and director bar, $91,819 of disgorgement, $6,655 of interest and a $50,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$50k

Disgorgement

$91.8k

Prejudgment interest

$6.7k

Total relief

$148k

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 announced the judgment of April 25, 2022 on May 10, 2022 (LR-25389) in the Northern District of California; the complaint was filed March 31, 2022. It alleged Romero falsified financial statements, commingled funds across PFI entities and paid existing investors from new investor money between October 2016 and May 2020.

The record omitted the penalty and the bar.

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. 2022-05-10 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.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.