Aequitas Receivership: Up to 35.23% Paid, Last Payout Eyed 2027

What this page is

Searches for Aequitas turn up news from 2016 to 2019 and law-firm pages. We did not find a page that adds up what the court record says investors actually received, so we read the receiver's distribution plan, the court's findings, the second, third and fourth distribution motions, the receiver's final report, the successor trustee's reports, the SEC's 2026 filings, the Ninth Circuit's criminal opinion and the SEC Form D filings of the Aequitas entities.

The word Ponzi appears in this case in two ways. The SEC alleged a “Ponzi-like” scheme in its 2016 complaint. In March 2020 the court wrote that it “finds by a preponderance of the evidence that a Ponzi scheme existed” and adopted the receiver's plan. We use the word only as the court or the SEC used it. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

The case in dates

What was raised, and what the SEC alleged

The SEC alleged that the three individuals executed a “Ponzi-like” scheme and that, by the end of 2015, the Aequitas companies owed investors $312.0 million and had virtually no operating income to repay them. Those statements are allegations. The Ninth Circuit's criminal opinion, which recites the facts in the light most favorable to the prosecution, says Aequitas raised approximately $346 million from private investors between June 2014 and February 2016, including $167 million through the Private Note program, $68 million through Income Opportunity Fund II and $15 million through a Luxembourg bond.

The court itself adopted the receiver's finding that the enterprise was insolvent by not later than July 3, 2014. That is the date the plan uses to measure each investor's Total Investment.

Aequitas companies also filed Form D notices with the SEC. These show who the issuers said they were selling to, in their own words. The finance company that issued the Private Notes reported the largest total:

EDGAR full-text search returns 34 Form D and Form D/A filings by entities named Aequitas between 2012 and 2017. The figures are cumulative and overlap, because funds lent money to the finance company, so they should not be added together. They are not the receiver's claim figures.

The four distributions

In total the SEC's July 2026 motion says the receiver made four distributions of “over $117 million to defrauded investors and other claimants” and more than $105 million to secured creditors and other counterparties.

How a threshold turns into your payment

Under the court-approved plan the receiver pays on a “rising tide” basis. Each defrauded investor has a Total Investment, in most cases the book balance on July 1, 2014 plus cash conveyed to Aequitas through March 16, 2016, and a Pre-Receivership Return, the cash paid to the investor in that period. For the fourth distribution the receiver wrote that the amount is the greater of (Total Investment times the Interim Recovery Threshold) minus the Pre-Receivership Return, or zero, and that investors whose return was already above the threshold “may become eligible for a future distribution, if there is one.” Earlier distributions are subtracted.

Worked example for $100,000 of Total Investment (our arithmetic):

This is the formula in the receiver's motions applied to round numbers, not any individual's payment. Individual amounts also depend on whether a claim was aggregated with other accounts, whether the investor owed net-winner offsets and, for members of the named plaintiff groups, intra-group agreements: the trust's FAQ warns that a plaintiff-group member's distribution “might be somewhat more or less than the Receiver's Calculated Interim Distribution.” The plan does not require paying claims that would result in a distribution under $50.

The whole pool, in the court's numbers (our arithmetic)

These are not recovery rates and should not be added together. Pre-receivership payments to investors are left out, the settlement money went to a subset of investors, and the receiver counted about 1,600 defrauded investors with allowed claims totaling $555,735,276. If the final $2.0 to $2.5 million were spread evenly over $557 million, $100,000 of Total Investment would receive about $360 to $450; the plan pays only investors still below the threshold, so real amounts differ. The receiver's own 2019 estimate was that participants in the third-party suits “may on average exceed 95-cents for each invested dollar” and that investors outside those suits “will receive less than the average.”

What is left and when the last payment is due

The receivership is over. The court's November 1, 2023 order authorized the trustee “to make a final distribution to Allowed Claimants including Defrauded Investors” after selling what remains and paying the trust's expenses. The case itself is still open: the SEC files a status report every 90 days, and the next one is due by January 19, 2027.

The $2,836,337.60 is the most recent trust cash figure in the documents we could read. The trustee's later activity is described in a report we could not read in full, so the balance today is not known. What remained in the last reports was mostly small: settlement receivables from net winners, a few minor investments and cash. Added to that is the $300,000 the SEC collected as a civil penalty from one defendant (Dkt. 1075, transfer ordered July 16, 2026).

Who else paid, and who was never in the pool

The receiver's final report says its work led to $234,613,000 of payments to the investor class from the professional-firm defendants (Tonkon Torp, Integrity Bank & Trust, Deloitte & Touche, EisnerAmper, Sidley Austin, Duff & Phelps and TD Ameritrade) and to further seven- and eight-figure payments to other plaintiff groups that are confidential. It also records the release of a $50 million contribution claim presented by Deloitte, and says the receiver's own settlements brought over $23.3 million to the estate and removed at least $130 million of claims.

Equity investors in some Aequitas funds were not in the pool. The receiver's final report says that under the court-approved plan the equity investments in, and the assets of, six fund groups (COF/CCM, ETCFF, LUX, WRFF, AHF and APF) were not consolidated, and “the Pass-through Investors in those entities received no distribution from the QSF.” The plan names them: Aequitas Capital Opportunities Fund, LP (now CCM Capital Opportunities Fund, LP), Aequitas ETC Founders Fund, LLC, the Luxembourg entities, Aequitas WRFF I, LLC, Aequitas Hybrid Fund, LLC and Aequitas Partner Fund, LLC. If your money was in one of those equity vehicles, the receivership distributions described on this page did not apply to you; promissory-note investors, including those who held notes issued directly by a single-purpose entity, were paid from the trust.

The criminal cases

The people below are named because they were defendants in the SEC case or in the federal criminal case. The descriptions follow the court documents.

The jury acquitted all three trial defendants of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The SEC's civil case against the three individual defendants ended in judgments entered on April 13, 2020.

What a reader can do with this

1. Find your own row. The receiver filed his fourth motion with a list of every defrauded investor's Total Investment, Pre-Receivership Return, earlier distributions and the amount calculated for the fourth distribution (Exhibit 3 to the declaration of August 31, 2023, posted on the receivership site, veritaglobal.net/aequitasreceivership). Comparing your row to your statements tells you which threshold applied to you.
2. Keep your address current. The trust's FAQ says it is the claimant's responsibility to keep the trustee informed of an email address, mailing address and custodian, using its Change of Information Form sent as a PDF to investorservices@aequitascapital.com.
3. Check your litigation group. If you were part of a plaintiff group that settled with the professional firms, your payments from that group follow the group's own agreement. The FAQ says distributions for some groups come through counsel.
4. Ask a tax adviser how your payments were reported. The settlement money and the receivership distributions came from different sources and at different times. We have not seen anyone's tax forms and cannot say how your payments should be treated.
5. Compare with other cases. For scale, EquiAlt's receiver reports payments of 107% of approved claims (EquiAlt); the Woodbridge Liquidation Trust has paid $37.04 on a $75.00 face target (Woodbridge). Our table of eleven cases is here.

What is not known

• The size, date and recipients of the final distribution. The projection is $2.0 to $2.5 million, and the date has moved from the second half of 2026 to the second quarter of 2027.
• How much cash the trust holds today, and whether the remaining receivables and investments will be collected.
• The aggregate recovery of investors across all sources: pre-receivership payments, receivership distributions and settlement money are reported in different filings on different bases, and individual investors' mix differs.
• The sentences of the individuals who pleaded guilty, which we did not find in the documents we read.

FAQ

All figures are from primary documents read on November 11, 2026: the SEC's complaint (Dkt. 1); the receiver's distribution plan and Ponzi motion (Dkt. 787) and the court's findings (Dkt. 813, March 31, 2020); the final judgments (Dkts. 822-825, April 13, 2020); the receiver's second (Dkt. 848), third (Dkt. 895) and fourth (Dkt. 1034) distribution motions and declaration (Dkt. 1035); the receiver's report as of June 30, 2023 (Dkt. 1029); his final report motion (Dkt. 1042) and the closing order (Dkt. 1045); the successor trustee's reports (filed August 31, 2024 and April 22, 2026, Dkt. 1071); the SEC's motion to transfer funds (Dkt. 1075), the order of July 16, 2026 (Dkt. 1077) and its status reports (Dkts. 1078 and 1081); the receivership FAQ at veritaglobal.net/aequitasreceivership; the Ninth Circuit's opinion in United States v. Jesenik, No. 23-2282 (September 5, 2025); and SEC Form D filings by Aequitas entities.