SEC v. Robert Newell and Black Hawk Funding, Inc. (2026)

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-robert-newell-2026) by email

In May 2026 the SEC announced a judgment against Robert Newell and Black Hawk Funding, Inc.. On 7 May 2026 a final judgment was entered against fund manager Newell, ordering $668,300 in disgorgement, $254,067 in interest and a $668,300 penalty, with a five-year bar from securities offerings. The complaint alleged he and his firm raised about $37.7 million for a cannabis fund and misused it, including Ponzi-like payments, among other misuses.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-26553
Date filed	2026-05-14
Date resolved	2026-05-14
Court	U.S. District Court, Central District of California
Status	judgment
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Robert Newell (individual) ; Black Hawk Funding, Inc. (entity)
Also named elsewhere	Black Hawk Funding, Inc. is named in 1 other matter
Cited as charged or alleged	Advisers Act s.206 ; Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.17(a) (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $668k
Disgorgement: $668k
Prejudgment interest: $254k
Total relief: $1.6m
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 May 14, 2026 as release LR-26553. On 7 May 2026 a final judgment was entered against fund manager Newell, ordering $668,300 in disgorgement, $254,067 in interest and a $668,300 penalty, with a five-year bar from securities offerings. The complaint alleged he and his firm raised about $37.7 million for a cannabis fund and misused it, including Ponzi-like payments, among other misuses.

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.

The relief recorded in our data is a civil penalty of $668,300, disgorgement of $668,300, prejudgment interest of $254,067, as the release or order states it. Penalty and disgorgement are distinct: disgorgement returns the gain, while the penalty is punitive. We store them separately so that aggregate figures across the library are not double-counted.

Timeline

2026-05-14 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.

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.