A retirement account became the entry point

The first pitch did not begin with tax liens. In March 2021, the SEC says Gilchrist texted an investor about financing payments to plaintiffs whose class action cases had already settled. The proposed return was 12.5 percent every 90 days. Gilchrist allegedly called the money guaranteed and said friends were already collecting interest.

“It is a sweet deal. It pays 12 1/2 % every 90 days.”Text attributed to Gilchrist in the SEC complaint

The investor asked directly whether there was any way the deal could go wrong. According to the complaint, Gilchrist replied that he could see none. The two then discussed how the investor might fund the investment, including a home loan or an early withdrawal from a 401(k). The investor ultimately took $220,000 from the retirement account, accepting a 10 percent withdrawal penalty and future taxes.

The reassurance was not only verbal. Gilchrist allegedly drafted a partnership agreement that described an investment in federal hip replacement class action settlements. He later supplied an “Assignment of Interest” that appeared to bear a law firm principal’s signature and sent an image of a bank statement purportedly showing the combined investment balance.

The SEC alleges that the money went to Gilchrist’s personal purposes and investors in unrelated ventures. That first offering established a pattern later repeated with a different asset: promise a high return from a transaction the investor could not monitor, provide paperwork that appeared to verify it, then direct the money somewhere else.

The tax-lien story offered two ways to win

Beginning in 2023, Gilchrist allegedly presented tax liens as a low-risk route to large returns. The explanation sounded self-protecting. Investors would fund delinquent property taxes. If the owner repaid the obligation, the investment would earn interest. If the owner did not repay, the lienholder could supposedly take ownership of the property and sell it.

The SEC alleges that the second step never happened. In the second offering, one investor put $134,718 into eight purported partnerships. Gilchrist allegedly named specific properties, drafted partnership agreements and supplied notarized “Redeemable Deeds of Trust.” Those documents comforted the investor and helped lead to additional investments.

According to the complaint, none of the identified properties was subject to a tax lien when the investments were made. The purported signers of the deeds were not the actual property owners, and their signatures had been forged. Gilchrist also allegedly claimed that he and other investors were contributing money when they were not.

When payments started arriving late, the SEC says the explanations became more elaborate. In October 2024, Gilchrist allegedly told the investor that he was stuck in North Carolina helping homeowners with disaster claims and had limited access to phones and electronics. Fitness center and debit card records cited in the complaint placed him in Texas during that period. Weeks later, he claimed to be recovering from emergency surgery in Tennessee. The complaint says he had visited his Mansfield, Texas gym two hours before sending that message.

Gilchrist ultimately repaid much of that investor’s principal, the SEC says, but used proceeds from other offerings to make much of the repayment. More than $8,300 allegedly remained unpaid.

The largest offering depended on a trusted intermediary

The third offering accounted for about 70 percent of all the money identified in the complaint. The SEC alleges that 18 people invested $1,298,076 after Gilchrist and Novinger promoted promissory notes tied to tax liens. Sixteen were Novinger’s clients.

Novinger did more than make introductions, according to the regulator. He allegedly found investors, arranged and joined sales calls, suggested investment amounts, distributed promissory notes, helped complete paperwork, facilitated transfers and took custody of at least one investor’s check. Gilchrist agreed to pay him 6.6 percent of each contribution, the complaint says.

The sales pitch used urgency. In a May 2023 text reproduced by the SEC, Novinger told a prospective investor that two liens remained and gave the person 60 minutes to choose before he moved to the next name on the list. He also allegedly told at least two investors that he had personally invested. The SEC says he had not.

Promissory notes stated that investors would receive a 20 percent annual return, paid in two stages, and that the notes were secured and guaranteed by a lien on real property. In early 2024, existing investors were encouraged to roll their principal into new 12-month notes paying 18 percent. Interest payments already received helped make those rollovers look safer, the complaint says.

He asked for proof, then kept the money flowing

The most consequential sequence in the complaint concerns what Novinger allegedly did after doubts took hold. Beginning by June 2023, he repeatedly asked Gilchrist to provide proof that tax liens had actually been purchased. Gilchrist did not supply it.

The SEC says Novinger could have searched county records himself but did not. The complaint also emphasizes his familiarity with Ponzi schemes: he ran an annual cycling event presented as benefiting victims of another scheme and discussed Ponzi schemes on his podcast.

That context does not itself prove liability. The regulator’s central allegation is narrower and more concrete: Novinger continued recommending and facilitating investments after he had repeatedly sought basic proof of the assets and failed to receive it.

As of May 13, 2026, third-offering investors had received about $637,881 of the $1,298,076 they invested, according to the complaint. Simple subtraction leaves roughly $660,195 unrepaid, although the complaint’s use of “about” means that figure should also be treated as approximate.

A prior broker bar did not stop the alleged sales work

The SEC’s allegations against Novinger carry an additional institutional dimension. In 2016, following an earlier enforcement action, the Commission permanently barred him from association with brokers, dealers, investment advisers and several other regulated securities roles.

The new complaint alleges that his work on the third offering amounted to acting as an unregistered broker and associating with a broker in violation of that order. The SEC points to the full sales process, not merely referrals: soliciting clients, describing returns and risk, advising on rollovers, arranging calls, handling documents and helping transfer investor funds.

The allegation exposes a practical limit of a regulatory bar. An order can prohibit activity, but it does not physically prevent a barred person from using existing client relationships, a radio audience or a podcast audience to connect people with an investment. Detection and enforcement still depend on conduct becoming visible.

The fourth offering continued after the warnings

Between February and October 2025, two Oklahoma investors provided a combined $200,000. They had reached Novinger after listening to his former radio show, according to the complaint. Gilchrist and Novinger allegedly told them the money would buy tax liens and generate a 20 percent annual return.

Gilchrist provided each investor with documents that purported to secure the investment with his home. The SEC says the property already carried a mortgage and lacked enough remaining equity to cover their investments. The complaint also alleges that Novinger failed to disclose his earlier concerns about the missing tax-lien records.

There was another undisclosed warning sign, according to the filing. Novinger and his wife had loaned Gilchrist at least $30,000 earlier in 2025. Before the second Oklahoma investor committed money, Gilchrist was allegedly months in default without making a single payment to the Novingers. The SEC says Novinger did not disclose that default.

No tax liens were purchased with the $200,000, the regulator alleges. The money instead went to personal purposes and payments to investors from earlier offerings.

What the lawsuit asks the court to do

The SEC brings ten counts. It accuses Gilchrist of securities fraud across all four offerings. It accuses Novinger of fraud and aiding and abetting fraud in the third and fourth offerings, acting as an unregistered broker in the third offering, and violating the earlier broker-association bar. It brings an unjust-enrichment claim against Rebecca Novinger concerning funds received through her account.

The requested remedies are not judgments already entered. The Commission asks the court to:

• Permanently enjoin Gilchrist and Novinger from future securities-law violations.
• Restrict both men from participating in securities offerings, while preserving the ability to trade exchange-listed securities in their personal accounts.
• Order disgorgement of alleged ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest.
• Impose civil monetary penalties on Gilchrist and Novinger.
• Require Rebecca Novinger to return funds the SEC says are traceable to investor proceeds and to which she had no legitimate claim.

The complaint demands a jury trial. It does not establish how the defendants will answer the allegations, whether the court will accept the SEC’s account, what remedies might ultimately be imposed, or how much money could be recovered for investors.

The paperwork was part of the product

The alleged scheme did not rely on promises alone. Partnership agreements named properties. Deeds appeared notarized. Promissory notes described collateral. A bank statement appeared to show millions of dollars. Early interest payments made rollovers easier to sell.

Those features matter because they shifted the investors’ attention from verification to reassurance. The SEC’s complaint says the assets behind the paperwork either did not exist or had never been acquired. By the time doubts were explicit, the recruiting operation allegedly continued anyway.

That is the filing’s most important unresolved test for the court: whether the regulator can prove that the professional authority, sales process and documentary trail were not merely careless, but components of securities-law violations that moved more than $1.85 million away from the uses investors were promised.