SEC v. Adam S. Kaplan and Daniel E. Kaplan (2023)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In March 2023 the SEC charged Adam S. Kaplan and Daniel E. Kaplan. The complaint alleges that the brothers inflated advisory fees and misappropriated more than $5 million from at least 60 clients, and made Ponzi-like payments to some clients to hide this; the charges are fee overbilling and misappropriation, not a Ponzi scheme.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-25656
Date filed	2023-03-03
Court	U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York
Status	filed
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Adam S. Kaplan (individual) ; Daniel E. Kaplan (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Advisers Act s.206 ; Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: —
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: —
Alleged gain: —

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on March 3, 2023 as release LR-25656. The complaint alleges that the brothers inflated advisory fees and misappropriated more than $5 million from at least 60 clients, and made Ponzi-like payments to some clients to hide this; the charges are fee overbilling and misappropriation, not a Ponzi scheme.

This library does not tag the matter as a Ponzi scheme: on a source check, the document mentions Ponzi-like payments only in passing, or as part of another party's scheme, and the charges are about something else. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

This matter is at the allegation stage. Nothing in the regulator's filing has been proven, and the respondents are entitled to the presumption that it has not been.

Timeline

2023-03-03 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added September 10, 2026. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.