Ponzi Scheme Precedence

[tempor]

Let's say, the same defendant is charged by both criminal & civil case for alleged Ponzi scheme.
Assume the defendant is finally convicted and charged penalty in criminal case but the defendant is insolvent, while court appointed receiver in civil case recovered assets which is basically the invested money of victims.
Under this condition, can the penalty payment to the government be sourced from the receiver's estate?
Then, does the penalty precede the restitution to the victims?
Appreciate if anybody enlightens me how it works.
Thank you.

[FredPuli43]

Which country are you in? This is a UK site. We wouldn't have that problem. The civil case would wait upon the criminal one. The reason is that a conviction in the criminal case proves the civil case irrefutably, without more being done to prove the civil case. There is then a criminal court investigation, conducted like a civil investigation by a judge alone, into the assets of the defendant, so that victims can claim their compensation from known assets.

[tempor]

Hi FredPuli43,

Many thanks for your answer. I'm in the US but UK system must be more or less similar here.
I fully understand the logic that 'a conviction in the criminal case proves the civil case irrefutably' and the victims in civil case can claim to get final distribution from the recovered assets for their lost investment.
My point here is about the clash between Penalty levied to the defendant in criminal case and Victms' Claim. If the defendant has no assets, the source for the penalty & claims is only the recovered assets, then which one is given priority? I assume the penalty precedes the claims, say the penalty is $100,000 and the victims' total claim is $400,000 but the total recovered asset is only $300,000, then the victims can receive only $200,000, after government takes full $100,000, can't they?
Is my understanding correct?

[FredPuli43]

We don't look at it that way. We establish how much the criminal has profited from the crime, in money or property terms, which inevitably means establishing all his assets, and we then jail him. The exercise is to see how long the jail term should be and to ensure he doesn't retain any profit from the crime. (This applies to drug dealers etc too; they however don't often have defined victims who have suffered financial loss and the court merely seizes the profits). We don't fine him, but even if we did ,we'd take the fine out of assets he had before any profits were made. In practice, once we have worked out the profit he made from his victims there is little or none left, because he has usually spent more of the profit than that which remains.

Our criminals have one advantage over American ones. We don't impose consecutive sentences amounting to far more than the life expectancy of a human being !