SEC v. Alicia Bryan (ponzi schemes, 2014)

Judgment entered

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In October 2014 an SEC administrative law judge barred Alicia Bryan by default from the securities industry and from penny-stock offerings, after a district court judgment against her for selling two programs the SEC says were Ponzi schemes. The judgment carries $228,917 in disgorgement with interest and a $150,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$150k

Disgorgement

$229k

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$379k

Alleged gain

$227k

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 initial decision follows SEC v. Pedras in the Central District of California, where a default final judgment of June 2014 enjoined Bryan and imposed disgorgement and prejudgment interest of $228,917.22 and a $150,000 civil penalty. The decision notes that the Maxum and FMP programs were not real and were Ponzi schemes that raised more than $5.6 million from over fifty investors, with Bryan receiving $226,676 in commissions.

She sold the programs; she is not described as running them. The penalty from the court judgment was missing from the record.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the decision finds the programs she sold were Ponzi schemes. 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. 2014-10-22 Initial decision

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• Initial decision (ID-697)
• Order instituting proceedings
• Finality order

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.