On August 26, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts entered a final consent judgment against a New Jersey-based former broker who was previously charged by the SEC with defrauding retail customers in a cherry-picking scheme.

According to the SEC's complaint, Michael A. Bressman of Montville, New Jersey, misused his access to an omnibus or "allocation" account to obtain more than $700,000 in illicit trading profits over a six-year period ending in February 2018. The SEC's complaint alleges that Bressman placed trades using the allocation account and then "cherry-picked" profitable trades, which he allocated to his own account and the account of two family members, while allocating unprofitable trades to other customers' accounts.

The court's judgment enjoins Bressman from future violations of the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and orders him to pay disgorgement of $730,923. Bressman's obligation to pay disgorgement is deemed satisfied by an order in a parallel criminal action, brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts and transferred to the District of New Jersey, requiring Bressman to pay restitution of $793,680.  In the parallel criminal action, Bressman was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and 18 months of supervised release and ordered to pay $793,680 in restitution after his conviction on one count of securities fraud and one count of investment advisor fraud.

The SEC's litigation has been handled by Vanessa De Simone and supervised by Joseph Sansone, both of the Market Abuse Unit.