New York - Samuel Wyly, the billionaire investor who filed for bankruptcy three days ago, is trying to burn through cash with extravagant spending before his assets can be frozen in a Securities and Exchange Commission civil suit, lawyers for the agency told told a judge.

Wyly, 80, faces a possible $400 million forfeiture order after a jury in May found him liable for using offshore trusts to hide stock and make illegal trades. Now, the SEC claims, he's using Chapter 11 protection as an "end run" around the regulator. A final forfeiture amount hasn't been set.

"His monthly household expenses alone would boggle the average homeowner," the SEC said Tuesday in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, where he lives. "The budget is simply too fat to approve."

Wyly's spending each month includes $2,200 for his pool, home maintenance and landscaping; $2,000 for groceries; $7,000 to support family and friends; and more than $100,000 for running his family office, the SEC said.

Wyly filed the budget as part of a request for bankruptcy court approval of his personal expenses and to have access to cash set aside as collateral. Such expenses need a judge's signature before they can be paid while in bankruptcy.

Fees for running the family office "are not described or delineated with any detail," the SEC said in the filing.

Wyly listed the SEC and the Internal Revenue Service as his two biggest creditors in a Chapter 11 petition filed Oct. 19 in Dallas.

A federal jury in Manhattan found Wyly and his late brother Charles perpetrated a fraud that earned them at least $550 million in illegal trading profits over 13 years.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, who oversaw the trial, ordered the forfeiture of $187.7 million plus interest. Depending on how the interest is calculated, the total will be from $300 million to $400 million, the judge said.

Charles Wyly was killed in an auto accident in 2011. His estate is a defendant in the civil case.

In its filing Tuesday, the SEC said Wyly has enough global assets to pay the judgment in full. The agency intends to seek an asset freeze against Wyly in a bid to stop "excessive dissipation of assets and transfers of assets to family members," according to the SEC filing.

Wyly's other expenses include $29,000 a month for the mortgage on his wife's bookstore in Aspen, Colorado, and $523,345 in annual salaries for his personal writing assistants and housekeeper, according to the SEC's filing.

Wyly, co-founder of the arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores and Sterling Software, also has enough assets and offshore funds to pay his expenses and shouldn't get special access to U.S. funds normally put on hold in bankruptcy, the SEC said.

"The commission is concerned that the debtor is seeking to deplete easily reachable domestic funds as part of a concerted asset-protection plan to withhold assets from U.S. creditors, such as the commission," the SEC said.

Wyly's bankruptcy lawyer, Josiah Daniel of Vinson & Elkins in Dallas, declined to comment.

Wyly's attorney on Oct. 8 asked Scheindlin to determine whether the forfeiture is consistent with the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which bars the government from imposing excessive fines.

The SEC asked the judge to deny Wyly's request for more time to file a list of his assets and financial information.

The SEC, which sued Wyly in 2010, is his second-biggest creditor in the bankruptcy, with a "disputed" claim of $198.1 million, according to his Chapter 11 petition. Wyly listed the Internal Revenue Service as his biggest creditor, saying the size of that debt, also disputed, is unknown.