What Actually Happened in the Miami Trial
A plain-English map of the five preserved issues on appeal in SEC v. Gentile — and why we walked out of the courthouse before the verdict.
Published July 19, 2026 · Case No. 1:21-cv-21079-BB (S.D. Fla.) · On appeal, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
On June 28, 2024, after a ten-day trial before Judge Beth Bloom, a Miami jury returned a verdict in SEC v. Gentile. On October 17, 2025, the district court entered a Rule 54(b) final judgment totaling $19,155,586.14 in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties (ECF 393). The appeal is now pending in the Eleventh Circuit.
The government did not try a fraud case. The jury made no fraud finding and no investor-harm finding. The trial turned on one narrow question — whether SureTrader, a broker-dealer licensed and supervised by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, also required a parallel U.S. registration, and whether I, as its control person, induced that registration failure. Everything else the SEC's press office wants the public to hear was not in the verdict.
There is one thing about that trial I have not said publicly until now: my lawyer Adam Ford and I did not stay in the courtroom for the verdict. After closing arguments we walked out of that federal courthouse and went home. Not out of disrespect for the jury. Because we already knew. The record we had built over ten days — every objection, every proffer, every preserved instruction — was an appellate record. Whatever number the jury wrote on the form, this case was going up to the Eleventh Circuit. In the fight that actually decides whether the SEC gets to keep this judgment, we had already won.
Five preserved issues going to the Eleventh Circuit
- 01
Rule 15a-6 burden shift
In its pretrial Omnibus Order (ECF 264), the district court held that the SEC bore the burden of proving solicitation of U.S. persons as part of its prima facie § 15(a)(1) case. At the charge conference three years later, the court instructed the jury that the Rule 15a-6 foreign-broker exemption was an affirmative defense on which Gentile bore the burden of persuasion. The defense objected across the board (Trial Tr. Day 9 p.m. at 2, 6–8). Where a statutory exception goes to the scope of the prohibition itself, the burden of persuasion stays with the plaintiff.
- 02
§ 20(b) as a freestanding cause of action
Section 20(b) of the Exchange Act prohibits doing indirectly what 'such person' could not lawfully do directly. Its text limits liability to predicate violations the defendant himself could have committed. Using § 20(b) to reach an individual for a foreign broker-dealer's § 15(a)(1) failure-to-register — with no fraud alleged — creates an unbounded form of secondary liability the Supreme Court has twice declined to imply into the Exchange Act (Central Bank of Denver; Meyer v. Holley).
- 03
Liu v. SEC — twice violated
The disgorgement award violates Liu v. SEC, 591 U.S. 71 (2020), on two independent grounds. First, it imposes $13.1 million in joint-and-several liability on Gentile for a corporate entity's gross receipts without the concerted-wrongdoing finding Liu requires. Second, it categorically refuses to deduct more than $22 million in documented, legitimate SureTrader business expenses — clearing costs, technology, compliance, salaries — that Liu expressly protects.
- 04
Seventh Amendment — jury required after Jarkesy
After SEC v. Jarkesy, 144 S. Ct. 2117 (2024), and as Justice Thomas reasoned in the Sripetch concurrence (June 4, 2026), disgorgement under 15 U.S.C. § 78u(d)(7) is a legal remedy that carries a Seventh Amendment jury-trial right. The $13.1M disgorgement here was imposed by the bench after the jury was gone — a structural constitutional error, not a discretionary sentencing choice.
- 05
Mistrial denied after Dorsett walked into the excluded record
The Omnibus Order precluded any reference to Gentile's 2016 federal indictment and his FBI/DOJ cooperation. On direct examination, SEC witness Philip Dorsett repeatedly used coded references to that excluded material — telling the jury that Gentile was 'in conflict with the SEC' and that there was 'something going on.' The defense moved for a mistrial. It was denied. No curative instruction can unring that bell once the words are before the jury.