SEC v. National Note of Utah and Wayne L. Palmer (ponzi schemes, 2015)

Judgment entered

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In December 2015 the SEC announced it had won its case in the District of Utah against Wayne L. Palmer and National Note of Utah, a Ponzi scheme with more than 600 investors, with disgorgement of $66.96 million and civil penalties of $1.95 million.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$2m

Disgorgement

$67m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$68.9m

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 court found that Palmer promised a guaranteed 12 percent annual return and said the money was secured, but moved investor funds between accounts and used them to pay returns to other investors. Palmer must disgorge $1,767,287.10 and pay a $1,050,000 penalty; National Note must disgorge $65,188,155.83 and pay $900,000.

The record held only Palmer's disgorgement and penalty and a status of unknown; the two defendants' figures are now combined and the outcome is a judgment.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes payments to earlier participants made from later participants' 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. 2015-12-04 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.