SEC v. Patrick Churchville and ClearPath Wealth Management (ponzi schemes, 2016)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 4, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (sec-patrick-churchville-ponzi-schemes-2016) by email

The SEC sued Rhode Island adviser Patrick Churchville and ClearPath Wealth Management in 2015 over a fraud on the funds they advised. Churchville was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2017, and on June 1, 2022 the court entered a final judgment against him ordering $29.1 million in disgorgement, $4.6 million in interest and a $225,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

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 sued Churchville and ClearPath on May 7, 2015, alleging they diverted deposits to pay other investors, used proceeds to pay unrelated investors, and converted investor funds. He pleaded guilty on August 4, 2016 to five counts of wire fraud and one of tax evasion, with sentencing set for October 2016. The civil case was still pending, so no civil relief is recorded.

The record listed only Churchville and no court.

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.

SEC release 25417 reports that on June 1, 2022 the District of Rhode Island entered a final judgment and permanent injunction against Churchville, ordering disgorgement of $29,103,738, prejudgment interest of $4,577,810 and a civil penalty of $225,000. The release says the court had earlier frozen assets and appointed a receiver, whose work continued, and that Churchville was sentenced on March 16, 2017 to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one of tax evasion. The release speaks of the judgment against Churchville and does not describe a separate judgment against ClearPath Wealth Management, so this page does not state how the case ended for ClearPath. Checked on 2026-10-04.

Money note: the dollar amounts in this record's text describe the June 2022 final judgment against Churchville; to avoid counting the same amounts twice, the money fields are left empty here and the figures are held on the record for the same case under release LR-23781 (sec-patrick-churchville-et-al-ponzi-schemes-2017).

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. 2016-08-05 Litigation release published
2. 2022-06-01 Final judgment and permanent injunction against Churchville (SEC LR-25417)

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
• SEC litigation release 25417 (final judgment)

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 4 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.