SEC v. Baker and others (unregistered distributions, 2019)

Judgment entered

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In August 2019 an SEC administrative law judge entered a default decision against Terrence A. Ballard for selling unregistered Faulkner oil and gas interests, ordering $1,106,229 disgorgement and a $650,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$650k

Disgorgement

$1.1m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1.8m

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

On August 26, 2019 an SEC administrative law judge issued a default initial decision against Terrence A. Ballard, the last remaining respondent in a proceeding with Robert L. Baker, Jacob B. Herrera and Michael D. Bowen, who had settled. It finds he sold unregistered oil and gas interests in Faulkner companies that defrauded investors of at least $80 million, ordering cease and desist from Securities Act Sections 5(a) and 5(c), disgorgement of $1,106,228.64 with interest, and a $650,000 penalty, with bars. The record previously omitted the penalty and garbled the names.

This library tags the matter as unregistered distributions, based on the conduct the document describes. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Unregistered distributions — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2019-08-26 Initial decision

Primary documents

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

• Initial decision (ID-1385)
• Order instituting proceedings
• Finality order

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.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.