Fictional Episode
The End of the Day
He bought the stock in one big account and decided at closing time who got it. The winners went to his family. The losers went to his clients.
About this episode: the adviser in this story is fictional. The scheme, the numbers and the outcome are real and come from the public record linked at the end.
Names, places and dialogue are invented. Any resemblance to a real person is coincidental.
Scene One · A One-Man Shop
Call him Glenn. A certified financial planner for three decades, running his own small advisory firm in Minneapolis. He was the owner and the only employee. Clients liked that. No layers, no call centers, just Glenn.
Scene Two · The Block Account
Advisers often buy a stock in one combined “block” account and then split the shares among clients. Done right, everyone gets the same average price. In the real case behind this episode, the SEC found the adviser did it differently. He waited until the end of the day, sometimes after the market closed, to decide who got what.
If a stock went up during the day, it went to his own account, his firm's account, or his family's. If it went down, it went to clients. If he bought the same stock twice at two prices, the cheap shares went to his side. On one day in April 2021, one lot cost $24.28 a share and another cost $22.93. The clients got the $24.28 shares.
Scene Three · The Scoreboard
Over 18 months, the favored accounts made money on the same day nine times out of ten and gained about $105,800. The 78 client accounts made money on the same day less than a third of the time and lost about $112,700. There was no written policy, and nobody else in the firm to notice.
Scene Four · The Ending
The brokerage that held the accounts noticed the trading, ended its agreement with the firm in August 2022, and shut off the block account. In June 2025 the SEC barred the real adviser from the industry, censured his firm, and ordered disgorgement and a $141,000 penalty, in a settlement where he neither admitted nor denied the findings. In March 2026 the SEC set up a fund of about $251,600 to pay back the clients.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the public record. Read it for yourself:
- SEC administrative proceeding summary (June 3, 2025)
- SEC Order, Release No. 34-103173
- SEC Fair Fund Order, Release No. 34-104913 (March 2, 2026)
A charge or complaint is an allegation, not a finding, unless we say a court, regulator or jury decided it.