IFP Advisors fined $400K for supervision failures in ex-rep’s ‘cherry-picking’ scheme

SEC office

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges against a Florida-based investment adviser and its former representative Wednesday relating to a multiyear “cherry-picking” scheme.

IFP Advisors and its former investment adviser representative, Richard Keith Robertson of California, agreed to settle charges for the “fraudulent practice of preferentially allocating profitable trades or failing to allocate unprofitable trades to an adviser’s personal accounts at the expense of the adviser’s client accounts,” according to an SEC administrative proceeding.

IFP was fined $400,000, censured, and must retain an independent compliance consultant to review its policies and procedures regarding trade allocation, monitoring, and recordkeeping. The firm did not admit nor deny the agency’s findings.

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