SEC Charges Former CCO For Altering Records Provided to SEC Examiners

ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDING
File No. 3-22493

July 15, 2025 – The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against a former chief compliance officer of a registered investment adviser for altering records and creating fictitious forms in response to an SEC examination of her employer.

According to the SEC’s order, from September 2022 to September 2023, SEC examiners performed an examination of Suzanne Ballek’s employer, a registered investment adviser. The order finds that as part of that examination, SEC examiners requested documents and information related to the adviser’s pre-clearance trading policy applicable to certain of the adviser’s supervised persons. As stated in the Commission’s order, Ballek, the adviser’s Chief Compliance Officer, in responding to an SEC request for pre-clearance trading forms, modified the dates and/or filled in missing information on many of the forms, which in many cases had been filled out after the trades were completed and after any oral trade authorizations were provided. The Commission’s order finds that by doing so, Ballek created the appearance that certain forms were completed correctly and signed on the date of the transactions. According to the order, in certain instances where there had been no form completed for a particular trade, Ballek created a form and affixed the trader’s signature to it without the trader’s knowledge or authorization before providing it to SEC examiners.

The SEC’s order finds that Ballek aided and abetted and caused her employer’s violations of Sections 204(a) and 206(4) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and Rule 206(4)-7 thereunder. Section 204(a) provides that records of investment advisers are subject to examinations by the SEC. Section 206(4) and Rule 206(4)-7 together require an investment adviser registered with the SEC to adopt and implement written policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent violation of the Advisers Act and rules thereunder by the investment adviser and its supervised persons. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, Ballek consented to an order requiring her to cease and desist from committing or causing any violations of the charged provisions and to pay a civil penalty of $40,000. The order also bars Ballek from acting in a compliance capacity with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, municipal securities dealer, municipal advisor, transfer agent, or nationally recognized statistical rating organization, or for an advisory board, investment adviser or depositor of, or principal underwriter for, a registered investment company or affiliated person of such investment adviser, depositor, or principal underwriter, for a period of three years.

The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Ryan Suniga and supervised by Jeffrey Shank of the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office. The examination that led to the investigation was conducted by Kellie Ann Kawamoto, Kristin Dryer, Kent McAllister, and Gena Kusiak of the Division of Examinations.