SEC v. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. (unregistered distributions, 2015)

Settled

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In January 2015 the Securities and Exchange Commission settled an administrative proceeding with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. over two courses of conduct: executing billions of penny-stock shares for an unregistered Bahamian broker-dealer customer while failing to withhold taxes and report properly, and selling shares for another customer in violation of Securities Act Section 5. Oppenheimer was censured and ordered to pay $4,168,400 in disgorgement, $753,471 in prejudgment interest and $5,078,129 in penalties; a further $10 million penalty was deferred in light of a FinCEN penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$5.1m

Disgorgement

$4.2m

Prejudgment interest

$753k

Total relief

$10m

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 January 27, 2015 as release 3-16361. The respondents named are Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. (0 individuals, 1 entity).

The order finds that between 2008 and 2010 Oppenheimer sold more than 2.5 billion shares of a penny stock for a customer, generating about $12 million in proceeds and $588,400 in commissions, and that it knew the Gibraltar customer was acting as an unregistered broker for U.S. persons using a false tax form. A Gibraltar-related pump-and-dump case is cited as background; Oppenheimer is not charged with manipulating a price. This library tags the matter as unregistered distributions.

The conduct is recorded against equities.

The relief recorded in our data is disgorgement of $4,168,400, prejudgment interest of $753,471, civil penalties of $5,078,129. Penalty and disgorgement are distinct: disgorgement returns the gain, while the penalty is punitive. We store them separately so that aggregate figures across the library are not double-counted.

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. 2015-01-27 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

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 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.