The SEC has sued 38 entities it says used its own adviser filing system to look real, and has pulled all 38 sets of filings off its website
The credential these firms were using was the Securities and Exchange Commission's own filing system.
The Commission announced on Thursday evening that it has charged 38 entities, alleging each made material misrepresentations in Forms ADV filed between 2025 and 2026 to portray themselves falsely as legitimate advisory firms to American investors. All 38 complaints were filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. They charge violations of Sections 204(a) and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.
None of the allegations has been tested. No defendant has answered, and this item names none of them, though the release lists all 38.
What the complaints allege
A Form ADV is the form an investment adviser files. An exempt reporting adviser is one that files a subset of it and does not register, and the filing appears in the Commission's public database either way.
According to the complaints, the defendants listed places of business at addresses in Colorado where they had no presence, and gave telephone numbers that are disconnected or belong to unrelated businesses. The Commission alleges they disclosed an ownership structure and numerical data identical or nearly identical to a multitude of other purported exempt reporting advisers. It alleges they claimed the private funds they purportedly advised had been audited by one of two independent accounting firms, and that neither of those two firms can be found in any public registry of federal or state accountancy firms.
Some were marketed on websites. The Commission alleges that some of those sites displayed a fake certificate indicating the entity was registered with the Commission, which it was not.
The filing system itself
Two details in the release are about the plumbing rather than the marketing.
The complaints allege that a number of the defendants connected to the Commission's filing system from IP addresses tracked to foreign jurisdictions. They also allege that the defendants failed to respond when Commission counsel asked them for records to substantiate what their Forms ADV said.
Laura D'Allaird, who heads the Enforcement Division's Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, described the pattern as "large-scale abuse of SEC adviser filings by persons, several of whom are likely located overseas." She said the Commission would act to disrupt operations that use fraudulent filings to feign legitimacy with retail investors.
What the Commission is asking for, and what it has already done
The remedies sought are permanent injunctions against further violations, civil penalties, and conduct-based injunctions barring the defendants from filing Forms ADV as exempt reporting advisers at all.
That last one is the specific ask, and it points at what the case is about. The relief is not only money. It is removing access to the form.
The Commission has meanwhile taken the filings down. The release states that the exempt reporting adviser filings of all 38 entities have been removed from its website, and the Office of Investor Education and Assistance has issued an investor alert saying scammers are using such filings to create a false impression of legitimacy. The alert tells investors to be wary of a purported exempt reporting adviser that offers advice directly to individuals, or that claims to be registered with the Commission.
The release records the assistance of the FBI and its Operation Level Up.
