JONATHAN O. HAFEN, in his capacity as Court-Appointed Receiver,

Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 23-4116 GRETCHEN A. HOWELL, an individual; LESLIE M. HOWELL, an individual,

Defendants - Appellants. _________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Utah (D.C. No. 2:19-CV-00813-TC) _________________________________ Matthew M. Boley, Cohne Kinghorn, P.C., Salt Lake City, Utah, for Defendants-Appellants. Jeffrey A. Balls (Joseph M.R. Covey and Matthew J. Ball, with him on the brief), Parr Brown Gee & Loveless, Salt Lake City, Utah, for Plaintiff- Appellee.

_________________________________ Before HARTZ, PHILLIPS, and EID, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ Appellate Case: 23-4116 Document: 57-1 Date Filed: 11/15/2024 Page: 2

Lured by the promise of a secure and exclusive investment opportunity, Les and Gretchen Howell made substantial investments in the Silver Pool, a silver-trading scheme operated by Gaylen Rust through his business, Rust Rare Coin. Though Gretchen was about $75,000 short of recovering her investment when the government shut down the scheme, Les did far better. After about ten years of investing, he profited about $3.2 million above his roughly $1.2 million investment. He took his distributions and bought land in Kingman, Arizona. There, he built a house where he lives with Gretchen. Though we are uncertain when he did so, Les made Gretchen a joint tenant with himself, gifting her a one-half share in the property.

About a decade after Les began investing, the Silver Pool and Rust Rare Coin were exposed as a Ponzi scheme. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) brought an enforcement action against the operator of the scheme, Gaylen Rust, and the district court appointed Jonathan O. Hafen as receiver to recover assets fraudulently transferred through the scheme.

As the receiver, Hafen brought this ancillary action against Les and Gretchen under Utah’s Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (“UVTA”), seeking to recover the $3.2 million in profit that Les made from the scheme, by asserting claims of fraudulent transfer and unjust enrichment. The district court granted Hafen summary judgment against Les and Gretchen on the fraudulent- transfer claims. It declined to reach the unjust-enrichment claims because the

2 Appellate Case: 23-4116 Document: 57-1 Date Filed: 11/15/2024 Page: 3

fraudulent-transfer ruling gave Hafen complete relief. The district court entered a judgment against Les and Gretchen for Les’s profit. The judgment noted that it included the funds Les transferred to Gretchen by giving her joint title in the Kingman property.

Both parties filed motions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). Hafen sought prejudgment interest, which the district court granted at a 5% interest rate. The Howells sought reconsideration of the summary-judgment order and clarification on the scope of Gretchen’s liability. The district court denied the Howells’ motion, but clarified that Gretchen was liable for half the $3 million that Les spent on the Kingman property. Consistent with those orders, the district court entered an amended judgment that awarded Hafen prejudgment interest and clarified that Gretchen was liable for $1.5 million of the total money judgment.

The Howells appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Hafen, the calculation of the judgment against each of them, and the award of prejudgment interest to Hafen. Exercising our appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, 1 we agree that the district court erred in calculating the