SEC v. Live Ventures Incorporated et al. (financial reporting fraud, 2021)

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.

Report an error in this record (sec-virland-a-johnson-2021) by email

In 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission published a release alleging financial reporting and disclosure violations at Live Ventures. This library does not tag the matter with a manipulation technique. No monetary relief has been recorded at this stage; the matter is an allegation and remains unproven.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-25155
Date filed	2021-08-03
Court	U.S. District Court, District of Nevada
Status	filed
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Live Ventures Incorporated (entity) ; JanOne Inc. (entity) ; John Isaac (individual) ; Kingston Diversified Holdings LLC (entity) ; Virland A. Johnson (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Exchange Act s.13(a) ; 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: —
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: —
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 August 3, 2021 as release LR-25155. The respondents named are Live Ventures Incorporated, JanOne Inc., John Isaac, Kingston Diversified Holdings LLC and Virland A. Johnson (2 individuals, 3 entities). The action was brought in the U.S. District Court, District of Nevada.

The complaint alleges inflated income and share count, undisclosed executive pay, and a stock promoter hired by the CEO. No undisclosed paid publicity is charged, so the paid-promotion tag has been removed.

This library does not tag the matter with a manipulation technique, because the document does not describe one. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

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.

Later development: SEC release LR-26613 (August 21, 2026) says that on August 20, 2026 the SEC filed consents and proposed final judgments, subject to court approval, as to CEO John Isaac (injunction and a $175,000 penalty) and former CFO Virland Johnson (injunction and a $118,225 penalty). These are proposed, not entered, and the release says nothing about Live Ventures, JanOne or Kingston Diversified, so the status stays filed. Checked on 2026-10-04: no final outcome for the matter as a whole was found on the SEC litigation release or administrative proceeding pages, so the status stays filed.

Timeline

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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.