SEC v. Total Wealth Management and Jacob Keith Cooper (2015)

Judgment entered

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.

Report an error in this record (sec-total-wealth-management-inc-cooper-2015) by email

In August 2015 an SEC administrative law judge permanently barred adviser Jacob Keith Cooper and ordered about $1.82 million in disgorgement plus interest and a $780,000 penalty, over undisclosed revenue sharing and weak due diligence at Total Wealth Management, Inc.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	3-15842
Date filed	2015-08-17
Date resolved	2015-08-17
Court	SEC administrative law judge
Status	judgment
Asset class	bonds
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	registration bar
Defendants	Total Wealth Management, Inc. (entity) ; Jacob Keith Cooper (individual) ; Nathan McNamee (individual) ; Douglas David Shoemaker (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Advisers Act s.206 ; Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.17(a) (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $780k
Disgorgement: $1.8m
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $2.6m
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 decision covers Cooper only; the proceeding was stayed for Total Wealth, Nathan McNamee and Douglas David Shoemaker pending settlements. The Division proved violations in recommending client investments while taking undisclosed revenue-sharing payments. Disgorgement is $982,057.72 plus $833,935.27, with interest, and the sums go to a Fair Fund.

The decision mentions that one investment, Life's Good, was later revealed as a Ponzi scheme run by a third party, which Cooper had not examined properly. That is a due-diligence failure on another person's scheme, not a Ponzi scheme the respondents operated, so the ponzi-schemes tag has been removed. The earlier record also listed one name as "Total Wealth Management, Inc. Cooper".

Timeline

2015-08-17 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.

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. submit a correction.