•  
• Tweet
•  
•        Print
•  
•         Track Keywords
•  
• 

Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers:

On June 3, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a short and unsparing order. It denied Evan H. Katz's motion to vacate the settlement he agreed to in September 2024 over his role in distributing forged audit materials to prospective hedge fund investors. The Commission's message was blunt: a settlement is a settlement, and "settlor's remorse" is not a reason to undo one.

For anyone who has followed the Katz saga on these pages - from his role promoting the imploded NIR Group funds in 2009, to the 2024 SEC action over the Crawford Ventures Absolute Return Fund, to his now-familiar habit of marketing a new opportunity within days of regulatory scrutiny - the order reads less like a surprise than a confirmation.

Katz tried to make his sanctions disappear. The SEC said no. And while that motion was pending, he kept marketing to prospective investors (October 2025) yet another hedge fund that compounds at "+86% per year CAGR, Sharpe about 2, Sortino about 3".

"One of the last matters from a prior enforcement regime"

Katz's central argument was a creative one. He asked the Commission to vacate the Settled Order on the theory that it "represents one of the last matters from a prior enforcement regime," pointing to the SEC's recent voluntary dismissals of certain unrelated civil actions in the digital-assets area, against dealers, and involving a cyberattack. In other words: the rules of the game have changed, so my settlement should change too.

The Commission was not persuaded. Voluntary dismissals in unrelated matters, it held, are "neither a change in law nor a factual development" that renders a settlement unworkable, more onerous, or contrary to the public interest. The order cited a January 2026 federal decision, SEC v. Mango Labs, in which a court rejected the identical move, noting that successive administrations may take different positions for "a variety of factors, such as the limited resources of the government." A shift in enforcement appetite, the court said, does not let a party "in hindsight" escape a deal simply because his "assessment of the consequences was incorrect."

The Commission added the practical concern that anyone watching this space will recognize instantly: were it to vacate a settlement on these grounds, it "would be inundated with similar requests from settling respondents." Katz, it found, entered into the order voluntarily, with counsel, "with his eyes wide open."

The sanctions he agreed to - and still has not paid

It is worth remembering what Katz signed up for. The Settled Order imposed a cease-and-desist order, a civil money penalty of $98,542.97, and disgorgement and interest of $103,940.80 - a total north of $202,000. Katz did not pay. The Division of Enforcement was forced to obtain a judgment in the Eastern District of New York in April 2025 to enforce the order. Katz still did not pay. Only in August 2025 did the parties reach what the Commission describes as an "informal payment plan," under which Katz would make monthly payments through August 2026.

So the timeline is this: agree to a settlement, decline to pay, get sued, decline to pay again, negotiate a payment plan - and then ask the Commission to throw out the whole thing. The audacity is the through-line.

"Victim," "due care," and a barred collateral attack

Having lost on his "prior regime" theory, Katz reached for the merits. He argued that he did not personally profit, that he "acted with due care," that he was a "victim" of the two brothers who created the fake materials, and that the Commission's order improperly imposed "an implied regime of strict liability." He also pointed to the reputational and business damage the order had done to his "personal and professional lives."

The Commission dispatched each point. By consenting to the order, it held, Katz "forfeited any challenge to the Commission's factual findings or legal conclusions" - the door to relitigating whether he was a victim or acted with care is closed. The reputational harm and "lost potential business opportunities" he complained of are, the order noted, "natural and foreseeable consequences" of agreeing to such an order in the first place. And the remedial steps he cited had already been credited in the original sanction. There was, in short, nothing left to argue.

Enter "Benoni Capital" - and the curious case of "Since 2003"

Which brings us to the rebrand. In an email circulated Jan 15, 2025, Katz writes: "As part of our company's continued expansion and further growth, and as of January 2025, we have rebranded and renamed our company Benoni Capital, Inc. But while we may have a new name..."

Expansion and growth is one way to describe the relaunch of a firm whose principal had just settled an SEC fraud-related matter and lost his only broker-dealer registration. Because here is what the public record shows. Katz's FINRA CRD number is 5848403. He entered the securities industry in 2013 - not, as the marketing implies, decades earlier. His most recent broker-dealer affiliation, with Stonehaven, LLC (CRD# 118913), ran only from May 2024 until early October 2024, when Stonehaven permitted him to resign after he failed to disclose the SEC investigation to the firm, in violation of firm policy. He currently holds no broker-dealer registration at all.

And yet the homepage of benonicapital.com today greets visitors with the line: "Since 2003, Benoni has helped compelling hedge and private equity funds grow and prosper."

But: Benoni Capital, Inc. is a January 2025 rebrand of Crawford Ventures. It has not existed "since 2003" under any name. Even Katz's own founder biography on the same website hedges, stating he has "worked on Wall Street for more than a decade" - a phrasing that quietly contradicts the two-decade claim splashed across the front page, and that aligns far better with a securities career that the regulators date to 2013. When the homepage and the bio page of the same site cannot agree on how long the principal has been in the business, prospective investors should take note.

The marketing never stopped - and neither did the numbers

The most telling evidence is not in any regulatory filing. It is in Katz's own outreach. In a direct message to a industry contact, Katz wrote: "Things are doing great here. Our hedge fund just won its sixth or seventh industry award for top performance (+86% per year CAGR, Sharpe about 2, Sortino about 3)."

Pause on that. Eighty-six percent compound annual growth. A Sharpe ratio of about 2. A Sortino of about 3. These are not the numbers of a real, durable hedge fund strategy; they are the numbers of a marketing pitch. And they are structurally identical to the pitch the SEC has already found wanting. In December 2023, while the Crawford fund was reportedly preparing to liquidate amid losses, Katz was still promoting it with the line: "Due to the stellar performance of Crawford's eight-professional investment team, over almost eight years (CAGR +50%/year, Sharpe >2, Sortino >4), Crawford has been honored by Hedgeweek."

Same template. Same triad of CAGR, Sharpe, and Sortino. Same invocation of industry "awards" as a substitute for verifiable, audited performance. The only thing that has changed is the headline number, which has somehow climbed from 50% to 86% even as the man behind it lost his registration and spent two years fighting the SEC over forged audit materials. An investor who took the December 2023 Crawford pitch at face value would have walked into aggregate losses. The October 2025 Benoni pitch asks the next investor to do the same thing, with a bigger number and a new logo.

The takeaway for investors

The June 3 order matters less for what it does to Katz - a payment plan grinds on, a settlement stands - than for what it confirms about the limits of reinvention. The SEC will not let a respondent erase the record simply because the enforcement weather has changed. Settlements are meant to be final, and the Commission said so plainly.

But the order does nothing to stop the marketing, and that is precisely the gap investors must mind. Nothing in the federal securities laws prevents a man who has settled a fraud-related matter, lost his broker-dealer affiliation, and failed to pay his sanctions from rebranding his firm, claiming a two-decade history it does not have, and texting prospective investors about an 86% CAGR. The system relies on the investor's own diligence to close that gap.

So the lesson is the same one this publication offered in 2024, only louder. Run the BrokerCheck. Check the CRD. Ask who audits the fund, and then verify the auditor exists and confirms the engagement - the failure to do exactly that is what the SEC sanctioned in the first place.

When a marketer leads with awards, a triad of eye-watering ratios, and a founding date that the firm's own website cannot keep straight, treat the pitch as a red flag, not a track record. Evan Katz took his chances, in the Commission's words, and "must live with his choice." Investors who skip the diligence will live with theirs.