SEC v. William M. Apostelos, et al. (ponzi schemes, 2019)

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.

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In 2019 the SEC announced a judgment against William Apostelos ordering $11,194,472 in disgorgement and $587,371 in interest, deemed satisfied by more than $32 million of criminal restitution and forfeiture, for funnelling investor money into Ponzi-like payments and other businesses.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-24617
Date filed	2019-09-25
Date resolved	2019-09-25
Court	U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio
Status	judgment
Asset class	commodities
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Apostelos)
Defendants	William M. Apostelos (individual) ; WMA Enterprises, LLC (entity) ; Midwest Green Resources, LLC (entity) ; OVO Wealth Management, LLC (entity)
Cited as charged or alleged	Advisers Act s.206 ; Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Exchange Act s.15(a) ; Securities Act s.17(a) ; Securities Act s.5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques	Ponzi schemes , Unregistered distributions

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 SEC alleged that Apostelos told investors their money would go into stocks, precious metals or real estate and instead used it for payments to earlier investors and promoters, other businesses he and his wife owned, and personal costs. The court also ordered his companies and relief defendants to pay disgorgement and interest totalling $11,781,844 jointly with him, likewise deemed satisfied.

The record had put that $11,781,844 combined figure in the interest field; his own interest is $587,371.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document 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.

Money note: the dollar amounts in this record's text describe the August 2019 judgment against Apostelos; to avoid counting the same amounts twice, the money fields are left empty here and the figures are held on the record for the same case under release LR-23397 (sec-william-m-apostelos-et-al-ponzi-schemes-2015).

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques 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.
Unregistered distributions — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

2019-09-25 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.

Date filed	Agency	Record	Status
2015-10-29	SEC	SEC v. William M. Apostelos and WMA Enterprises (ponzi schemes, 2015)	Judgment entered
2019-09-25	SEC	SEC v. William M. Apostelos, et al. (ponzi schemes, 2019)(this record)	Judgment entered

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.

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

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
SEC v. William B. McHenry, Jr. and First South Investments, LLC (ponzi schemes, 2023)	SEC	2023-09-26	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	—	judgment
SEC v. David F. Bandimere (ponzi schemes, 2019)	SEC	2019-11-22	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	$130k	settled
SEC v. Executive Financial Services, Inc. (ponzi schemes, 2019)	SEC	2019-09-04	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	$8.1m	judgment
SEC v. Jonathan H. Seigel, et al. (ponzi schemes, 2019)	SEC	2019-05-21	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	—	settled
SEC v. Anthony C. Zufelt (ponzi schemes, 2019)	SEC	2019-04-22	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	—	judgment
SEC v. Julieann Palmer Martin (ponzi schemes, 2015)	SEC	2015-03-09	Ponzi Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	$1.1m	judgment

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.