The long-running case against two bogus bitcoin mining companies has come to an end.

The Securities and Exchange Commission finally won a default judgment of $11.38 million in a case that goes back 18 months. GAW Miners and ZenMiner were first alleged by the SEC to be operating a Ponzi scheme in December 2015 following an investigation that was launched in January of the same year.

The founder of both companies, Homero Joshua (Josh) Garza, stood accused of having perpetrated fraud through GAW Miners and the lesser-known ZenMiner by offering shares in an alleged digital bitcoin mining operation while never having enough computing power for the mining it promised to conduct. “As alleged in our complaint, Garza and his companies cloaked their scheme in technological sophistication and jargon, but the fraud was simple at its core: They sold what they did not own, misrepresented what they were selling and robbed one investor to pay another,” the SEC said at the time.

The SEC first asked for a default judgment in February 2016 when it asked the U.S. District Court to “permanently enjoin those entities from future securities law violations and order them to pay disgorgement and prejudgment interest of $10,384,099, and an appropriate third civil penalty.” While it took 16 months for the court to make its ruling, it did so Monday, agreeing to the default judgment while adding a civil penalty of $1 million.

The case against Garza remains ongoing, though it’s not clear for how long. A report from April claimed that Garza himself would plead guilty to charges against himself by June 1, though there is no report of this having taken place on the scheduled date. The SEC states only that its litigation against Garza continues.

Photo: Josh Garza