SEC v. Joe Lawler (ponzi schemes, 2018)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 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.

Report an error in this record (sec-joe-lawler-ponzi-schemes-2018) by email

In December 2018 an SEC administrative law judge, by default, barred Joe Lawler from the securities industry and penny stock offerings, following a New Mexico federal judgment that found he ran the Projaris and Victory investments as a Ponzi scheme. That court ordered $835,000 of disgorgement, $85,146 of interest and a $150,000 penalty; he was also sentenced to 36 months.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$150k

Disgorgement

$835k

Prejudgment interest

$85.1k

Total relief

$1.1m

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 initial decision of December 21, 2018 (Administrative Proceeding 3-17650) relies on the district court judgment and a criminal conviction. It finds Lawler took $1.4 million for a purported real estate investment, invested only about $600,000, and used money for living costs, unapproved trading and Ponzi-style payments to complaining investors. The money figures come from the court judgment; the decision itself orders only bars.

The record omitted the $85,146 of prejudgment interest ordered by the court.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes because the document describes it as a scheme paying earlier investors with later investors' money. 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. 2018-12-21 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-1340)
• 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.