SEC denies Katz bid to drop $98,543 Crawford Ventures penalty

The SEC denied Evan H. Katz's motion to reconsider and modify the September 2024 settled order against him, leaving a $98,542.97 civil penalty and an equal disgorgement in place.

The Oct. 22 order — Securities Act Release No. 11454, Admin. Proc. File No. 3-22214 — declines to revisit the Commission's June 3, 2026 decision, which denied an earlier motion to vacate the settlement. Opalesque reported the denial. Katz was co-founder, chief operating officer and general counsel of Crawford Ventures Absolute Return Fund LP, a currency trading fund the SEC says raised about $16 million from some 45 investors by the end of 2023.

Katz settled without admitting or denying findings that he violated Sections 17(a)(2) and 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act, provisions under which negligence suffices and no finding of scienter is required. The SEC did not find that he forged documents or knew they were forged. It found he failed to take reasonable steps to verify the audit materials before they were provided to investors, and that fund marketing cited third-party rankings and awards without appropriate disclosure, including awards a ranking service had asked the fund to stop using.

The case leaves a due-diligence question for any manager relying on a third-party audit: who independently confirms the auditor exists and issued the report, and what record shows it? The marketing finding adds a second item — whether rankings and awards in a manager's deck can be documented, and whether any were withdrawn.

Trading at the fund was run by co-CIOs Akshay and Dev Kamboj, who approached Katz by unsolicited email in May 2021 claiming average annual returns of 78.71% from 2018 to 2020 across separately managed accounts. According to the SEC, prospective investors received an 'Audit Report' and a 'Performance Audit' purportedly issued by an Australian audit and consulting firm that had never audited the Kambojs and whose documents were forged. The settled order finds the Kambojs forged the materials, or had them forged at their direction, had someone impersonate the Australian accountant on a call with Katz, and hid the conduct from him. On Sept. 27, 2024, the same day Katz settled, the SEC filed fraud charges against the brothers in the Southern District of New York under Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5.

Katz's order required him to cease and desist and to pay $98,542.97 in disgorgement, $5,397.83 in prejudgment interest and a $98,542.97 civil penalty, $202,483.77 in total. The sanctions went unpaid, and the SEC obtained a judgment against him in the Eastern District of New York in April 2025.