SEC v. The Estate of Kenneth J. Casey (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Judgment entered

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In June 2021 the SEC sued the estate of Marin County real estate founder Kenneth Casey over an alleged Ponzi-like scheme that raised hundreds of millions of dollars. The SEC's whistleblower notice lists a qualifying judgment or order dated April 18, 2023, meaning monetary sanctions over $1 million, but the pages we read do not state its terms.

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 June 2, 2021 as release LR-25106. The respondents named are The Estate of Kenneth J. Casey (1 individual, 0 entities). The action was brought in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes, based on the conduct the regulator describes. Each tag links to a page explaining how that technique works, what statute it engages, and what penalties comparable actions have attracted. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

The release references a parallel criminal proceeding. Where a criminal case exists, the civil and criminal outcomes are recorded separately, because they resolve on different standards of proof.

Outcome. The SEC's whistleblower notice for the case (No. 2023-089) lists April 18, 2023 as the date of a qualifying judgment or order, which the SEC uses for orders with monetary sanctions over $1 million. We did not find the judgment itself, so the amount, the form of the order and whether the estate consented are not known, and no money is recorded. The estate is a defendant because Casey died in May 2020; the matter reflects the SEC's allegations, and the notice does not itself describe any finding.

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. 2021-06-02 Litigation release published
2. 2023-04-18 Qualifying judgment or order dated in SEC whistleblower notice

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 whistleblower notice 2023-089

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.