SEC v. The End of the Rainbow Partners and the Estate of Michael F. Anderson (ponzi schemes, 2017)

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-the-end-of-the-rainbow-partners-l-l-c-ponzi-schemes-2017) by email

In November 2017 the SEC charged a Vail, Colorado hedge fund company and the estate of its late principal Michael F. Anderson with misappropriating investor money in a Ponzi-like scheme. On February 7, 2020 the court granted summary and default judgment for the SEC, and the clerk entered final judgments on February 10, 2020 against the company, two relief defendants and Carolyn Anderson totalling about $2.87 million.

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 complaint, filed November 8, 2017 in the District of Colorado, alleges investors were told Anderson would day-trade using a proprietary algorithm and share profits with a charity, while he lost nearly $600,000, sent fabricated statements and moved money to his wife, a sham foundation and another fund. The court froze assets.

The complaint's allegations were later the subject of a court judgment, described below. The record had split the defendants into three strings ending in role labels.

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.

According to the District of Colorado docket, the court issued an opinion on February 7, 2020 granting the SEC's motions for summary judgment and default judgment, and the clerk entered final judgment on February 10, 2020. The monetary amounts were set at $1,715,594 against The End of the Rainbow Partners, L.L.C.; $247,635 against The End of the Rainbow Foundation; $506,221.86 against Carolyn Anderson; and $402,465.17 against Seaoma Consulting Company, about $2.87 million in total. The docket text does not say how these sums divide between disgorgement, interest and penalty, so the structured money fields are left empty. Later entries concern a satisfaction-of-judgment dispute and a court-appointed distribution agent. The estate of Michael Anderson and the fourth relief defendant, Bighorn Wealth Fund, were not separately checked.

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. 2017-11-14 Litigation release published
2. 2020-02-07 Court grants SEC summary and default judgment motions
3. 2020-02-10 Clerk enters final judgments against Rainbow Partners, the Foundation, Carolyn Anderson and Seaoma

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
• Court docket, SEC v. End of the Rainbow Partners, D. Colo. (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. submit a correction.