PGI Global: $198m in memberships, and Lamborghinis
The SEC charged Ramil Palafox on 22 April 2025 over PGI Global, a purported crypto and foreign exchange trading company that allegedly raised about $198 million on guaranteed high returns and multi-level referral incentives. The SEC alleges he misappropriated more than $57 million and paid earlier investors from later ones. The charges are allegations and have not been proven.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Charged — an allegation, not a conviction
- Reported loss
- $198.0 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Ponzi schemes and high-yield investment programmes, Fake investment platforms
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- The SEC filed charges on 22 April 2025 against Ramil Palafox, founder of PGI Global.
- PGI Global allegedly raised approximately $198 million from investors worldwide between January 2020 and October 2021.
- Palafox is alleged to have misappropriated more than $57 million of investor funds.
- The company sold "membership" packages that it claimed guaranteed high returns from crypto asset and foreign exchange trading.
- The packages carried multi-level-marketing-like referral incentives to encourage members to recruit new investors.
- The SEC alleges most of the remaining investor funds were used to pay other investors their purported returns and referral rewards, in a Ponzi-like scheme, until the collapse in late 2021.
- Alleged personal spending included Lamborghinis, luxury goods, watches and homes.
- Relief defendants named were BBMR Threshold LLC, Darvie Mendoza, Marissa Mendoza Palafox and Linda Ventura.
- The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia filed parallel criminal charges. These are allegations; Palafox has not been convicted and retains the presumption of innocence.
Why this case matters
Same structure as HyperFund, one year later, and a tenth of the size — which is the point. These are not rare events. They are a product category with a stable template, and the template does not need to be reinvented between instances.
The template: memberships rather than investments, a guaranteed return, a trading story that cannot be checked, and referral incentives that turn every investor into a recruiter.
What was alleged
PGI Global presented itself as a crypto asset and foreign exchange trading company. Between January 2020 and October 2021 it allegedly raised approximately $198 million worldwide by selling membership packages that guaranteed high returns from its supposed trading, and by paying members to recruit others.
The SEC alleges the trading did not exist in any meaningful sense. More than $57 million was allegedly misappropriated — spent, according to the complaint, on Lamborghinis, luxury goods, watches and homes — and most of what remained went to paying earlier investors their purported returns and referral rewards.
It collapsed in late 2021. The SEC charged it in April 2025; the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia filed parallel criminal charges. These are allegations. Palafox has not been convicted.
The gap that matters
Note the dates. The scheme ran from January 2020, collapsed in late 2021, and was charged in April 2025 — more than three years after the money stopped moving.
That gap is normal, and it is the reason enforcement is not a defence. Tracing international crypto flows, identifying investors across many countries and building a securities case takes years, and the assets are largely gone by the time the case is filed. Whatever protection exists has to operate before the money leaves, which means it has to be the investor’s.
What “membership” is doing
The word is not decoration. A membership package is not obviously a security, which is exactly its function: it makes the product sound like joining a club rather than buying an investment, and it puts distance between the operation and securities registration.
The SEC’s charge includes violations of the registration provisions, not only the anti-fraud ones. An investment that is not registered and does not need to be is the first thing worth checking, and it is checkable in minutes on a public database — before, not after.
Sources
- SEC Charges PGI Global Founder with $198 Million Crypto Asset and Foreign Exchange Fraud Scheme. US Securities and Exchange Commission. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 22 April 2025 charges, the $198m raised, the $57m misappropriated, the membership packages and referral incentives, the Ponzi-like payments, the alleged spending, the relief defendants and the parallel criminal case.
- Ramil Ventura Palafox. US Securities and Exchange Commission. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The litigation release recording the civil action and the relief sought.