SEC v. Todd Elliott Hitt et al. (ponzi schemes, 2021)

Judgment entered

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In September 2021 the SEC announced a final monetary judgment against Todd Hitt for disgorgement and interest of $15,001,498 in a case over investor money commingled and misappropriated in Northern Virginia real estate offerings; he had agreed to an industry bar and been sentenced to 78 months in a parallel criminal case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$15m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$15m

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 alleged that Hitt commingled investor money and project returns among entities he controlled, misappropriated funds to support his lifestyle and made Ponzi-like payments to prior investors, and separately misappropriated about half of $2.5 million raised for a relief defendant. He had agreed to a bifurcated settlement leaving the monetary remedies to the court. Because of his conviction and prison term the SEC dropped its claim for a civil penalty, which ended the case.

The record showed the matter as dismissed, apparently from the dropped penalty claim, and entered a rounded $15 million.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the SEC describes money from later investors being used to pay earlier ones. 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. 2021-09-10 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.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.