SEC charges 38 fake "advisers" who filed fictitious ADVs to look legitimate to retail investors
Thirty-eight entities filed Forms ADV to the SEC's public IARD system claiming exempt reporting adviser status — complete with fabricated compliance addresses, templated ownership disclosures, and in some cases fake SEC-registration certificates carrying real CRD and SEC numbers lifted from actual registrants. None had a genuine U.S. presence; the filings existed to make offshore operations look SEC-sanctioned to prospective investors.
We covered this one in full, including the ERA-vs.-registered-adviser distinction that made the scheme work and what both RIAs and legitimate ERAs should do in response.
Read our full breakdown →Form PF's next compliance date pushed back to July 1, 2027
The SEC extended the compliance date for the pending 2026 Form PF amendments for a third time — this round by nine months, from October 1, 2026 to July 1, 2027 — while the separately pending 2026 Proposed Form PF Amendments work through their own comment and adoption process. Current Form PF stays fully in effect; nothing about today's filing obligations changes.
Full timeline and what it means if you're a filer in our article.
Read our full breakdown →SEC formally proposes rescinding the pay-to-play rule entirely — Release IA-6994
What started in July as a Reg Flex Agenda entry to "ease" Rule 206(4)-5 is now a formal proposal to eliminate it outright, replacing it with a narrower amendment to the recordkeeping rule. The SEC's own fact sheet cites strict-liability foot-faults, a chilling effect on hiring, and pension plans losing access to advisers as the rule's core problems. Comment period is 60 days from Federal Register publication.
We updated our existing pay-to-play article in place with the full "how we got here" timeline and what the proposal would actually do.
Read the updated article →SEC charges Bay Area private fund executives in an alleged Ponzi-like scheme
The SEC charged private fund executives in the San Francisco Bay Area with running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi-like scheme, allegedly using new investor funds to pay purported returns to earlier investors rather than deploying capital as represented in fund offering materials. No litigation release detail beyond the press release is available yet.
Why it matters: another reminder that fund-level cash-flow and use-of-proceeds controls — not just disclosure language — are what examiners and, eventually, enforcement staff actually test.
Read the SEC press release →SEC charges a boiler-room operator with a $74 million pre-IPO fraud built on hidden markups
The SEC charged Andrew Spaventa and three entities he controlled — The Spaventa Group, TSG Capital Advisors, and TSG Alpha Partners — with defrauding more than 800 mostly retail investors, many of them retirees, out of $74 million between 2020 and 2025. The pitch: access to "pre-IPO" private companies through a fund, with no or low upfront fees. In reality, more than 100 cold-calling sales agents sold shares at markups averaging 46% above what Spaventa paid, and the resulting $23 million in hidden fees went largely to sales commissions and Spaventa personally.
Why it matters: the complaint charges broker-dealer registration violations alongside fraud — a reminder that "we're just a fund, not a broker" doesn't hold up when a sales force is compensated on commission for closing retail investors. If your firm uses any outside placement agents or referral arrangements, this is a useful case to walk through with them.
Read the SEC litigation release →Regulation Crypto Assets is now formally proposed — file number S7-2026-27
The crypto offering framework we covered last month has now been formally proposed, with a file number, release number, and a 60-day comment clock that starts running once it's published in the Federal Register. The core structure is unchanged: two new offering exemptions (up to $5M over four years, or up to $75M every 12 months), principles-based disclosure in place of full registration, and a conditional safe harbor out of "investment contract" status once an issuer's active managerial role ends.
Nothing is effective yet, and the comment period is the window to weigh in if this touches your business. See our full breakdown for what it means even for firms with no current crypto exposure.
Read our full breakdown →SEC goes to federal court to force compliance with a two-year-old subpoena
In a Texas oil-and-gas offering investigation, the SEC asked a federal court to compel a group of respondents to comply with subpoenas first issued in April 2024. According to the SEC's filing, the respondents had produced roughly 8,300 documents out of a set their own counsel described as potentially in the hundreds of thousands, and had repeatedly rescheduled or skipped testimony. No fraud finding has been made — this is purely about subpoena compliance.
Why it matters: it's a clean illustration of how document-production delay becomes its own liability, independent of whatever the underlying investigation turns up. A firm's ability to promptly locate, collect, and produce records in response to a regulatory request is itself something an examiner or investigator is watching.
Read the SEC litigation release →What we're leaving out
Across these two weeks the SEC feed also included a proposed transfer-agent modernization rule, a proposed amendment adding EU debt obligations to Exchange Act Rule 3a12-8, a new SEC/FDA memorandum of understanding, routine Investment Company Act notices and exemptive orders, and several administrative law judge scheduling orders. None of these change anything for an RIA or broker-dealer compliance program, so we're leaving them out.