SEC v. Brian Lam, NineSquare Capital Partners LLC and others (2022)

Judgment entered

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In September 2022 the SEC sued hedge fund manager Brian Lam, NineSquare Capital Partners and two others in an alleged fraud. After a bifurcated consent judgment in March 2023, the court entered a final judgment against Lam dated March 10, 2025, ordering disgorgement of $3,167,688, interest of $650,252 and a penalty of $3,167,688. The record covers Lam only; the other defendants were not checked.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$3.2m

Disgorgement

$3.2m

Prejudgment interest

$650k

Total relief

$7m

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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on September 23, 2022 as release LR-25518. The complaint alleges an $11.7 million offering fraud aimed at the Vietnamese-American community in which Lam used under 60% of investor money for trading, lost almost all of it, and misappropriated the rest, partly to make Ponzi-like payments to some investors.

This library does not tag the matter as a Ponzi scheme: on a source check, the document mentions Ponzi-like payments only in passing, or as part of another party's scheme, and the charges are about something else. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

Outcome as to Lam. The final judgment as to Brian Lam (C.D. Cal. No. 2:22-cv-06831, docket entry 60, dated March 10, 2025) follows a bifurcated consent judgment entered March 21, 2023, which left money to be set on the SEC's motion. After the SEC's partially unopposed motion, the court ordered disgorgement of $3,167,688, prejudgment interest of $650,252 (jointly and severally with NineSquare, with $434,692 of the disgorgement also joint with a relief defendant) and a civil penalty of $3,167,688, a total of $6,985,628. The judgment also repeats injunctions under the securities and advisers antifraud provisions. The same judgment text imposes a penalty of the same size on NineSquare in its own judgment, which is not counted here.

What this does not cover. Nathan Nguyen, Nguyen Group LLC, NineSquare's own judgment and the relief defendants were not checked beyond what Lam's judgment says. The fraud allegations were not adjudicated in the consent phase.

Timeline

1. 2022-09-23 Litigation release published
2. 2025-03-10 Final judgment as to Brian Lam ($3,167,688 disgorgement, $650,252 interest, $3,167,688 penalty)

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
• Final judgment as to Brian Lam (C.D. Cal.)

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.