SEC v. Mordechai Haim Ferder, Simba IL Holdings LLC and others (2026)
Alleged — pending
These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.
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.
In September 2026 the SEC charged Mordechai Haim Ferder, Simba IL Holdings LLC and 4 others. The complaint alleges that the founder of Lugano Diamonds sold diamond investment contracts for diamonds never bought, repaid investors in Ponzi-like fashion, and caused Lugano and its parent to book more than a billion dollars of fictitious revenue. It is chiefly an accounting and offering fraud; the trusts are relief defendants.
The record
| Agency | SEC |
|---|---|
| Release number | LR-26625 |
| Date filed | 2026-09-01 |
| Court | U.S. District Court, Central District of California |
| Status | filed |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Mordechai Haim Ferder ; Simba IL Holdings LLC ; Edit Fintzi Ferder (as trustee) ; Haim Family Trust ; TF 2021 Irrevocable Trust ; RF 2021 Irrevocable Trust |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
What is alleged to have happened
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on September 1, 2026 as release LR-26625. The complaint alleges that the founder of Lugano Diamonds sold diamond investment contracts for diamonds never bought, repaid investors in Ponzi-like fashion, and caused Lugano and its parent to book more than a billion dollars of fictitious revenue. It is chiefly an accounting and offering fraud; the trusts are relief defendants.
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.
This matter is at the allegation stage. Nothing in the regulator's filing has been proven, and the respondents are entitled to the presumption that it has not been.
Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on SEC pages. The SEC litigation-release index, which runs through LR-26664, has no later release naming these defendants.
Timeline
- 2026-09-01 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.