SEC v. Spark Trading Group, LLC and Niket Shah (ponzi schemes, 2019)

Judgment entered

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In February 2019 the SEC announced a final judgment, entered December 20, 2018, against Niket Shah and Spark Trading Group for a Ponzi scheme that took over $250,000 from friends and coworkers. The court ordered $299,229 of disgorgement with $24,742 of interest, jointly, and a $370,944 penalty against Shah.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$371k

Disgorgement

$299k

Prejudgment interest

$24.7k

Total relief

$695k

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 on February 8, 2019 (LR-24393) in the Eastern District of New York, after summary judgment for the SEC. The court found they falsely claimed Spark was SEC-registered, that investments were profitable and funds guaranteed. Both are permanently enjoined from violating Section 17(a), Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5.

The record omitted the penalty and the interest.

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. 2019-02-08 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.

Same matter

The library links these 2 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.