However Held.

Appellate opinions do not usually contain pictures. The Ninth Circuit’s August 4, 2026 decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Hoskins contains one: a boxes-and-arrows chart, drawn into the opinion itself, showing a family trust that owns an LLC, which owns a second LLC, which owns a house in Las Vegas. The court captioned it “Ownership scheme.” Federal Trade Commission v. Hoskins, No. 24-5747, slip op. at 26 (9th Cir. Aug. 4, 2026) (Lee, J., joined by Graber, J.; Bade, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part) (the diagram runs from the Hambil Trust, of which Hoskins and Rodgers are trustees and beneficiaries, to Resolute 21, LLC, to Monte Bello, LLC, to the Corona Vista property).

When a court takes the trouble to diagram a structure, it is worth asking why. The answer here is that the picture was the point. The panel laid out the architecture carefully, box by box, precisely so that it could explain in the next breath that the architecture did not matter. What made it not matter was not new law, and not a finding of sham. It was the text of the collection statute the government had invoked: the United States may levy on “[a]ll property in which the judgment debtor has a substantial nonexempt interest,” and “property” means “any present or future interest, whether legal or equitable, in real, personal … , or mixed property, tangible or intangible, vested or contingent, wherever located and however held (including community property and property held in trust).” 28 U.S.C. §§ 3203(a), 3002(12), quoted in Hoskins, slip op. at 24–25. The italics on “property held in trust” are the court’s; the emphasis on “however held” is ours.

However held. Four syllables that dispose of a great deal of expensive paper.

This is a case worth reading carefully, because it will be misread in both directions. Some will read it as proof that trusts and LLCs “don’t work.” Others will read it as a narrow curiosity about a federal collection statute nobody has heard of. Both readings miss the planning lesson, which is the one this series returns to again and again: the question is never how many entities stand between a debtor and an asset. The question is what interest the debtor still holds when the music stops.

Beginning in 2007, Benjamin E. Hoskins and his co-defendants ran a telemarketing operation — trading as Ivy Capital — that sold worthless “business coaching” to consumers on the promise that they could earn up to $10,000 a month selling goods online. The court’s summary of what the “coaching experts” actually taught is withering: “how to sell items on eBay — something that anyone could research online without having to spend thousands of dollars.” Hoskins, slip op. at 6–7. Consumers were funneled in by lead generators, upsold products of little or no value, and then met with a three-day refund window most of them were never told about. Id. at 7–8. The scheme took in more than $130 million.

The FTC sued in 2011. In 2013 the District of Nevada entered summary judgment, holding Hoskins and his company Dream Financial jointly and severally liable for $130,375,057.52, and his wife Leanne Rodgers liable for $1,128,795.78 as a recipient of scheme proceeds; on remand after an earlier appeal, Rodgers’s amended judgment came to $1,550,848.48 including prejudgment interest. Id. at 9; see also FTC v. Ivy Capital, Inc., 616 F. App’x 360, 360–62 (9th Cir. 2015) (unpublished) (affirming liability and the judgment against Hoskins, and holding Rodgers jointly and severally liable with Oxford Financial as its alter ego). The appeal below was from the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, D.C. No. 2:11-cv-00283-JCM-NJK (Mahan, J.). Money from the scheme had been routed through Oxford Financial, LLC — a company Rodgers used to move funds into the couple’s personal accounts, along with school tuition, a credit card, a vehicle, and other household expenses. Id. at 8.

Then came the part that matters to us. As of July 2023, roughly $131 million and $1.4 million remained outstanding. Id. at 9. What the couple did in the intervening decade is a case study in what improvisation looks like when it is drawn by a lawyer.

Their home — the “Drifting Shadow” property — sat under a court-ordered asset freeze. In 2013 they asked the court for relief to sell it, pleading that they could not make the mortgage and HOA payments and that foreclosure loomed. The court allowed a listing but warned it would not necessarily let them buy a new house with the proceeds. So they did not sell. Instead, in 2016, they conveyed Drifting Shadow to the Hambil Trust — of which Hoskins and Rodgers were both trustees and beneficiaries — and the Trust conveyed it on to an LLC of which the Trust was the managing member. They then sold the property anyway, without ever seeking the court approval the order contemplated. Id. at 10.

In 2021 Rodgers used some of those proceeds to buy the “Corona Vista” property for $980,000, paying deposit and closing costs out of her law firm’s trust account. She initially named herself as buyer, then reversed course, instructing the title company that the buyer would be “Monte Bello, LLC” and asking it to “[l]eave my name off of [the deed] if possible.” Id. at 10 (quoting Rodgers’s instruction to the title company). Monte Bello is owned by Resolute 21, LLC, which is owned by the Hambil Trust. Id. at 10–11, 26.

Four layers. A trust, two LLCs, and a deed with the wrong name on it.

The FTC obtained a writ of execution in August 2023 under the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 3001–3308, to levy on Corona Vista. The district court blocked it on two independent grounds, and the Ninth Circuit reversed on both.

First, the limitations clock. Rodgers moved for relief from judgment under Rule 60(b)(6), arguing that Nevada’s six-year statute of limitations on enforcing judgments had run. The district court agreed and declared the judgment against her “of no further force or legal effect.” Id. at 11–12 (quoting the district court’s order). The Ninth Circuit held this was error. The FDCPA “has a sweeping preemption provision” — it preempts state law “to the extent such law is inconsistent with a provision of this chapter,” 28 U.S.C. § 3003(d) — and it sets no time limit for collecting debts owed to the federal government by writ of execution. Id. at 14; see 28 U.S.C. § 3203. That was already circuit law under United States v. Gianelli, 543 F.3d 1178, 1181–83 (9th Cir. 2008), where a decade-old restitution judgment survived California’s ten-year bar; see also U.S. Small Bus. Admin. v. Bensal, 853 F.3d 992, 997–98 (9th Cir. 2017). The district court had thought Gianelli inapplicable because it arose from a criminal judgment; but the FDCPA defines “judgment” to include orders “arising from a civil or criminal proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 3002(8) (emphasis added); Hoskins, slip op. at 15.

Second — and this is the holding planners must absorb — the alter-ego requirement. The district court, relying on the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision in Callie v. Bowling, 160 P.3d 878, 879, 881 (Nev. 2007), held that the FTC had to “file a separate action for alter ego” to establish Rodgers’s interest in a house titled to an LLC owned by an LLC owned by a trust. Hoskins, slip op. at 11 (quoting the magistrate judge’s ruling). That would have meant a fresh lawsuit, fresh service, fresh discovery, and the full evidentiary burden of veil-piercing — years of work, and a real chance of failure.

The Ninth Circuit swept it away. The FTC “need not show that the trust holding the house is Rodgers’s alter ego under Nevada law.” Under the FDCPA, “the FTC may levy any property, however held, in which Hoskins and Rodgers have a substantial nonexempt interest. They have such an interest in the house because of their status as trustees and beneficiaries of the trust.” Id. at 6; see also id. at 24–27. Callie was inapposite, the court explained, because there a plaintiff was trying to add a new defendant to an existing judgment — a due-process problem. Here the FTC “already has a judgment against Rodgers, and it is simply seeking to enforce that judgment by levying on real property in which Rodgers has an equitable ownership interest.” Id. at 27. The court separately rejected the district court’s reliance on 28 U.S.C. § 3010(a), reading that provision as protecting innocent co-owners rather than co-debtors. Id. at 28.

The court also rejected the argument that the judgment was not a “debt owed to the United States” because the recovery is earmarked for defrauded consumers. The judgment on its face makes Rodgers liable to the FTC, and “the FTC is a ‘commission … of the United States.’” Id. at 15–16, 21 (quoting 28 U.S.C. §§ 3002(3)(B), 3002(15)(B)); accord FTC v. National Business Consultants, Inc., 376 F.3d 317, 319–20 (5th Cir. 2004). The court distinguished United States v. Bedi, 15 F.4th 222 (2d Cir. 2021), and declined to follow United States v. Bongiorno, 106 F.3d 1027 (1st Cir. 1997). Id. at 21–22. Judge Bade dissented in part on precisely this point — she would have held that a disgorgement decree for consumer redress falls outside the statutory definition of “debt,” so that Nevada procedure would govern the writ — while concurring that the district court was wrong to bar future enforcement, because the United States is not bound by general state limitations statutes unless expressly named. Id. at 29–30 (Bade, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part) (citing United States v. Thornburg, 82 F.3d 886, 893 (9th Cir. 1996), and Guaranty Trust Co. of New York v. United States, 304 U.S. 126, 133 (1938)). That split is worth flagging: the “debt” question has divided the circuits before, and a well-preserved version of it may not be finished.

It is tempting to file Hoskins under “government cases” and move on. That would be a mistake, for two reasons.

The first is scope. Yes, the FDCPA is a federal-creditor statute; a private judgment creditor chasing a Nevada house still has to work through Nevada procedure. But the population of clients who will never face a federal-agency judgment, a restitution order, or a government-enforced claim is smaller than clients think. And the doctrinal move the Ninth Circuit made — we do not need alter ego, because the debtor’s own retained interest is enough — is not unique to the FDCPA. It is the same move a state court makes when it declines to treat a self-settled trust as a barrier, and the same move a bankruptcy court makes when it looks past titling to the debtor’s beneficial interest. The statute made it easy here. It does not make it impossible elsewhere.

The second reason is that the structure in Hoskins failed on grounds that have nothing to do with which statute applied. Test it against the four questions this series always asks:

Was it seasoned? No. The judgment was entered in 2013. The trust was created in 2016. The house was bought in 2021. Every layer was built after the claim was not merely foreseeable but reduced to a number and entered on a docket. A structure funded under those circumstances is not a plan; it is a record of intent, available to the creditor at trial.

Was it irrevocable and discretionary? The opinion does not describe the Hambil Trust’s terms in detail — and we should not assume facts the court did not find — but it does record the fact that decides the case: Hoskins and Rodgers were both trustees and beneficiaries. Id. at 10, 25–27. They were on both sides of the table. A settlor who is also trustee and also beneficiary has not transferred anything in the sense the law cares about. He has renamed his own pocket. The Ninth Circuit did not need a theory of sham; it simply pointed at the retained equitable interest and levied on it.

Was it independently administered? Plainly not. The court observed that “Hoskins and Rodgers are the architects behind the Trust,” that the Trust took their previous residence, and that both received proceeds from its sale. Id. at 26. Independent administration is not a formality or a fee to be minimized. It is the mechanism by which a transfer becomes real. Absent it, there is no separation to respect.

Was it disclosed? No — and this is where the file turned from weak to fatal. The property was moved into the Trust while under a freeze order, sold without the approval the court had contemplated, and re-acquired through an entity chain accompanied by a written instruction to keep the buyer’s name off the deed. Id. at 10. Concealment is never neutral. It converts a merely defective structure into evidence of purpose, and it does so in the creditor’s own exhibit book, in the client’s own words.

One passage deserves care, because it will be over-read. In holding that the couple’s interest counted, the court cited its earlier decision in United States v. Harris, 854 F.3d 1053, 1056–57 (9th Cir. 2017) (per curiam), for the proposition that “a beneficiary’s interest in irrevocable, discretionary trusts qualified as property for purposes of the FDCPA.” Hoskins, slip op. at 27.

Read narrowly — as it should be — that says a beneficial interest can be property within the FDCPA’s expansive definition. It does not say that every discretionary beneficiary of every irrevocable trust holds a “substantial nonexempt interest” subject to levy, and it does not address spendthrift provisions, foreign situs, or a trustee’s genuine and unfettered discretion to decline. Those questions turn on the trust’s terms, the governing law, and the facts — which is exactly the point. Where a settlor has truly parted with dominion, the analysis is a real fight on real terms. Where he has not, as here, there is no fight at all: the court can look at the trust instrument, see the debtor’s name in the trustee line and again in the beneficiary line, and be done in a paragraph.

That is the distinction Hoskins actually draws. Not trust versus no trust. Not offshore versus onshore. Relinquished versus retained.

The chart in the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is, in the end, a picture of a very expensive misunderstanding: the belief that protection is a function of distance — of how many boxes you can stack between yourself and the asset — rather than a function of relinquishment and time.

A creditor with a valid judgment and a competent lawyer does not have to dismantle the boxes one by one. Under the FDCPA, as the court held here, the creditor does not even have to try. It asks a single question — what does the debtor still hold? — and levies on the answer, however held.

The structures that survive that question survive it because there is nothing at the end of the chain to point to. The settlor is not the trustee. The benefit is discretionary, not owed. The transfer was complete, and it was complete years before anyone had a claim to bring. And nothing about it was hidden, because nothing about it needed to be.

The time to build that is not the year the judgment is entered, nor the year after. It is the clear day, long before — the only time the law permits it to be built at all.

This note is general information about a published appellate decision and reflections on planning practice; it is not legal advice for any particular person or matter, and it makes no promise about the outcome of any structure. Whether a given trust or entity interest is reachable turns on the trust instrument, the governing law, the jurisdiction, and the facts and timing of the client’s situation, and should be assessed with qualified counsel.