Somewhere between the promised return dates, the basic offering documents, and the guarantee of yields as high as 100 percent, more than 100 investors across Texas handed their savings to a young man who had never executed a legitimate trade in his life. That man was John Fernandez, a Texas resident who was 26 years old when the SEC filed its civil complaint, and his instruments were two sequentially operated companies: Avail Progression, LLC and Elite Generators, Inc.
According to the SEC’s original complaint filed December 16, 2022, and a final civil judgment entered April 14, 2026, Fernandez raised more than $4.3 million by presenting himself as a forex trading savant with a proven track record, then spent nearly all of it on Ponzi-like payments and his personal lifestyle. Not a dollar was traded as promised. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas has now ordered Fernandez and his companies to pay $6,629,090.93 in combined disgorgement and prejudgment interest, plus a separate $472,902 civil penalty against Fernandez personally.
The Credentials Fernandez Claimed and the Trading Experience He Never Had
The pitch that drew more than 100 investors into Avail Progression and Elite Generators was built on a single invented credential. Fernandez told prospective investors he was a trading savant with a proven track record who could guarantee returns of up to 100 percent based on his strategies in the foreign exchange markets. He provided investors with basic offering documents that spelled out the specific amounts they would receive and the dates those returns would arrive. The documents looked formal. The underlying claim was fiction.
Fernandez had no professional trading experience of any kind. He held no credentials, carried no regulatory registration, and operated no actual trading program. The offering documents memorializing his promised returns functioned as nothing more than IOU paperwork, generating the appearance of structured investment agreements while the funds behind them went nowhere near the forex markets. For investors who believed they were entering a regulated, performance-backed vehicle, what they actually received was a series of commitments that Fernandez had no capacity to honor.
How Avail Progression Collapsed and Fernandez Simply Opened Elite Generators
The SEC alleges that Fernandez did not abandon his scheme when Avail Progression ran out of money. He pivoted. Once investor funds at Avail Progression were exhausted, he launched Elite Generators and began soliciting a fresh pool of investors under a new company name. The underlying mechanics of both operations were identical: promise guaranteed forex returns, collect funds, use nearly all of them for Ponzi payments to earlier investors and for personal expenses, and generate the impression of an ongoing business.
The structure of running two sequential entities, each producing a new round of fundraising, extended the scheme beyond what a single company could sustain. Avail Progression and Elite Generators were not separate business ventures. One was the successor to the other, created specifically because the first had run dry. The combined take across both operations exceeded $4.3 million. Every dollar raised across both companies went to the same destinations: payments to prior investors to buy time, and Fernandez’s personal lifestyle.
The Excuses That Arrived When Investors Asked for Their Money Back
When investors sought their overdue returns, Fernandez did not produce records or trading statements. He produced explanations. Car troubles. A failed wedding engagement. A temporarily frozen trading account. Each excuse served the same function: to create the impression of an operational delay rather than a scheme that had never operated at all. The SEC’s complaint documents this pattern of deflection, characterizing it as a “litany of excuses” deployed specifically when investors pushed for what they had been promised.
The excuses reveal the thinness of the operation more clearly than any financial record could. A legitimate forex trading firm facing a temporary setback produces documentation. Fernandez produced personal misfortune stories. The investors who received those explanations had no mechanism to verify whether a trading account existed, whether it had been frozen, or whether any currency position had ever been opened in their names. The scheme’s design made verification impossible, and the explanations were calibrated to fill exactly that gap.
The Final Judgment, the Full Financial Reckoning, and What the Court Permanently Bars
The SEC filed its complaint against Fernandez, Avail Progression, and Elite Generators in the Southern District of Texas on December 16, 2022. The court entered bifurcated agreed judgments against all three defendants on April 19, 2023, establishing liability. It then granted the SEC’s motion for monetary remedies on March 30, 2026. The final judgment, signed by United States District Judge Ewing Werlein, Jr. on April 14, 2026, closed the civil enforcement action that the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office had pursued for more than three years.
The financial terms are comprehensive. Fernandez, Avail Progression, and Elite Generators are jointly and severally liable for disgorgement of $5,002,383, representing the net profits of the scheme, together with $1,626,707.93 in prejudgment interest, for a combined payment obligation of $6,629,090.93 to the SEC within 30 days of the judgment. Fernandez is separately ordered to pay a civil penalty of $472,902. The court also permanently bars Fernandez from participating in the issuance, offer, purchase, or sale of any security through any entity he owns or controls, prohibits him from serving as an officer or director of any public company, and permanently enjoins all three defendants from further violations of Sections 5(a), 5(c), and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5.
Conclusion
The civil enforcement record in Case No. 4:22-cv-04365 now closes a scheme that defrauded over 100 investors of more than $4.3 million raised on a credential that did not exist. The total financial obligations imposed by the final judgment, including disgorgement, interest, and civil penalty, exceed $7.1 million — nearly twice what investors actually lost. No parallel criminal proceedings have been publicly announced against Fernandez. The investors who received excuses about car troubles and frozen trading accounts in place of their returns have not been identified as having recovered those funds.
