SEC seeks to sanction Monticello woman in Ponzi scheme

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered a Monticello woman who was implicated in a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme to defend herself against charges that she violated SEC regulations.

The SEC deemed that it is in the public interest to determine if the charges against Nicole J. Walker, 44, are true, according to a June 18 order, and if so, what remedial action is appropriate.

Walker worked as a telemarketer for Woodbridge Wealth, a California financial company that was not registered with the SEC and that sold unregistered securities.

From 2012 through 2017, Woodbridge operated a massive Ponzi scheme that raised at least $1.2 billion from more than 8,400 investors nationwide, including many elderly people who invested their retirement savings.

Walker joined the company in 2013 as in in-house salesperson and lived in Marina Del Ray, California. Initially, she was paid $12.50 an hour, according to court records. Eventually, she became one of Woodbridge’s top revenue producers and received about $977,000 in four-and-a-half years.

She was never registered to sell securities, according to the order.

She sold unregistered securities directly to customers, using fraudulent marketing materials and sale scripts that presented the securities as low risk, conservative investments. She also assisted outsiders such as insurance agents who peddled the investments.

In 2019, a federal judge in Miami sentenced former Woodbridge owner and CEO Robert H. Shapiro to prison for 25 years for conspiracy and tax evasion. In a civil lawsuit that year, Shapiro and Woodbridge were ordered to pay $1 billion for operating a Ponzi scheme.

Walker moved to Monticello, Sullivan County, in early 2020 to live with her parents.

In March 2020, the SEC accused her and two other top Woodbridge salespeople of illegally selling $444 million in securities.

On April 24, Walker consented to a judgment in Los Angeles federal court, without admitting or denying the allegations, that bars her from selling securities and allowing the court to determine if she has to pay a penalty and disgorge ill-gotten gains.

The new SEC administrative action is based on the findings in the California lawsuit.

In that case, Walker acknowledged the harm that was done, in a 2021 videotaped deposition after she had moved to Monticello.

“Everything that I was led to believe by management was that Woodbridge was on the up and up,” she said. She had even approached her parents, “but they weren’t in the position to invest in Woodbridge.”

“Just like I believed,” she said, clients “thought this was a good thing, and come to find out it wasn’t. … They gave money to work with that they lost. I feel horrible that I was even a part of it. It’s just, it’s really too bad. It’s too bad. … A lot of people got hurt.”