SEC v. MJ Capital Funding, LLC, et al, (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Judgment entered

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In August 2021 the SEC obtained an asset freeze and receiver over Johanna Garcia and her MJ Capital companies in an alleged Ponzi scheme. On April 30, 2025 the court entered a final judgment against Garcia with injunctions, an officer-and-director bar, and $3,286,798.50 in disgorgement plus $840,309.15 in interest, deemed satisfied by a criminal forfeiture order. The outcome for the two companies was not checked.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$3.3m

Prejudgment interest

$840k

Total relief

$4.1m

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 case on August 13, 2021 (LR-25168) in the Southern District of Florida, filed August 9. It alleged at most $2.9 million of advances were made and at least $20 million of new investor money paid returns to existing investors.

The record named the defendants as "MJ Capital Funding, LLC, et al," showed an officer-and-director bar before one had been imposed; that bar is now recorded from the final judgment.

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. The final judgment as to Garcia, signed April 30, 2025 and entered on the docket May 2, 2025, rests partly on an earlier consent judgment (Dkt. 169) that granted injunctions and an officer-and-director bar but left the money open. The court then awarded disgorgement of $3,286,798.50 and prejudgment interest of $840,309.15, $4,127,107.65 in all, and deemed that amount satisfied by the forfeiture order in her criminal case (United States v. Garcia, No. 1:23-cr-20350, S.D. Fla.). The judgment is against Garcia only; MJ Capital Funding and MJ Taxes and More were not checked. The document does not state her criminal sentence.

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. 2021-08-13 Litigation release published
2. 2025-04-30 Final judgment as to Johanna Garcia (entered May 2, 2025)

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
• Final judgment as to Johanna M. Garcia (S.D. Fla., Dkt. 291)

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.