SEC v. Ricardo Bonilla Rojas (ponzi schemes, 2013)

Judgment entered

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In 2013 an SEC administrative law judge barred Ricardo Bonilla Rojas by default, relying on a 2013 federal injunction against Section 5 and fraud violations and an order to pay $7.2 million disgorgement jointly with a co-defendant.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$7.2m

Prejudgment interest

$1.2m

Total relief

$8.4m

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

On September 4, 2013 an SEC administrative law judge barred Ricardo Bonilla Rojas by default after he did not answer the order instituting proceedings. It rests on an April 2013 District of Puerto Rico judgment enjoining him from Securities Act Sections 5 and 17(a) and Exchange Act Sections 10(b) and 15(a), and ordering him and a co-defendant jointly to pay $7,200,000 in disgorgement with $1,164,820 interest. The underlying conduct, from about 2005 to 2009, was a Ponzi scheme and sales of unregistered securities by an unregistered broker. The record previously showed the status as unknown.

This library tags the matter as ponzi schemes and unregistered distributions, based on the conduct the document describes. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

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

1. 2013-09-04 Administrative proceeding instituted (findings)

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 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.