The Securities and Exchange Commission on July 23 announced that Julie Lutz, the Regional Director of the SEC’s Denver Regional Office, will leave the agency at the end of this month after more than 40 years of service.

Lutz has served at the helm of the SEC’s Denver office since November 2013, overseeing the agency’s enforcement and examinations in a seven-state region. Before her appointment to regional director, Lutz supervised the enforcement program in the Denver office as an associate director, and managed the Denver trial unit as regional trial counsel. She joined the SEC staff in 1977 and worked in San Francisco and Washington D.C. before moving to the Denver office in 1996.

During Lutz’s tenure, the SEC’s Denver office has been involved in dozens of enforcement matters involving a variety of securities law violations, including charges against: 

Bankrate and three former executives for defrauding investors by manipulating the company’s financial results to meet analyst expectations;

Trinity Capital and five current or former executives for allegedly making material misstatements to investors concerning its provision for loan losses and its allowance for loan and lease losses in its quarterly and annual filings with the SEC during 2010, 2011, and the first two quarters of 2012;

AgFeed Industries and its top executives for allegedly conducting a massive accounting fraud on investors in which they repeatedly reported fake revenues from their China operations in order to meet financial targets and prop up the stock price;

MusclePharm, three executives, and the former audit committee chair for their involvment in a series of accounting and disclosure violations; and

Osiris Therapeutics and four former top executives with misleading investors by prioritizing revenue growth over lawful accounting.

Also during Lutz’s tenure, the examination program in the Denver office designed and executed several highly effective examination initiatives, including one focused on mutual fund share class selection that contributed to the office’s Asset Management Unit leading a self-reporting initiative that seeks to protect advisory clients from undisclosed conflicts of interest and return money to investors. In addition, the number of examinations conducted by Denver examination staff nearly doubled and resulted in significant enforcement actions. 

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