SEC v. Ramil Ventura Palafox (ponzi schemes, 2025)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

✓ 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.

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In April 2025 the SEC charged Ramil Ventura Palafox. The complaint alleges that Palafox raised about $198 million through PGI Global memberships with multi-level referral rewards, misappropriated over $57 million and used most of the rest to pay other investors in a Ponzi-like scheme. Four relief defendants are named, and he was arraigned 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

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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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on April 29, 2025 as release LR-26295. The complaint alleges that Palafox raised about $198 million through PGI Global memberships with multi-level referral rewards, misappropriated over $57 million and used most of the rest to pay other investors in a Ponzi-like scheme. Four relief defendants are named, and he was arraigned in a parallel criminal case.

This library tags the matter as a Ponzi scheme because the document describes returns to earlier investors paid from later investors' money, as alleged or found. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

A parallel criminal proceeding is referenced. Civil and criminal outcomes are recorded separately, because they resolve on different standards of proof.

This matter is at the allegation stage. Nothing in the regulator's filing has been proven, and the respondents are entitled to the presumption that it has not been.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on SEC pages or the court docket. The docket (E.D. Va. 1:25-cv-00681) shows that on May 21, 2025 the court let the Department of Justice intervene to seek a stay of discovery, and the data available to us shows nothing later and no judgment.

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. 2025-04-29 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
• Docket, SEC v. Palafox (E.D. Va. 1:25-cv-00681), via CourtListener

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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.