SEC v. Andrew Spaventa and others (boiler rooms, 2026)

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 4, 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 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil action against Andrew Spaventa and three entities he controlled, alleging they raised more than $74 million from over 800 mostly retail investors in eleven pre-IPO funds through over 100 sales agents who cold-called prospects with high-pressure tactics, hiding markups of about 46 percent.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-26611
Date filed	2026-08-17
Court	U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Status	filed
Asset class	equities
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	conduct-based injunction
Defendants	Andrew Spaventa (individual) ; The Spaventa Group LLC (entity) ; TSG Capital Advisors LLC (entity) ; TSG Alpha Partners LLC (entity)
Techniques	Boiler rooms

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 August 17, 2026 as litigation release 26611. The respondents named are Andrew Spaventa, The Spaventa Group LLC, TSG Capital Advisors LLC and TSG Alpha Partners LLC, in a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York on August 14, 2026. The release headlines Mr Spaventa as a boiler room operator.

As alleged, between about December 2020 and June 2025 the defendants raised more than $74 million for eleven private funds said to hold shares of pre-IPO companies, buying the shares through Spaventa-owned entities and selling them to the funds at marked-up prices, so that investors paid on average about 46 percent more than Spaventa did while being told upfront fees would be 12.5 percent at most. Over 100 sales agents allegedly cold-called thousands of prospects, many retirees, with high-pressure tactics; roughly $23 million in upfront fees were collected, over $12 million of it paid to agents. The SEC charges antifraud, registration and broker-dealer registration violations.

This library tags the matter as boiler rooms, 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.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on SEC pages. The SEC litigation-release index, which runs through LR-26664, has no later release naming these defendants.

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.

Boiler rooms — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

2026-08-17 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.

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

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
SEC v. Timothy Page, Trevor Page and others (boiler rooms, 2024)	SEC	2024-11-20	Boiler Rooms , Undisclosed Control Blocks	$7.7m	judgment
SEC v. Mario Gogliormella, Steven Lacaj, and Karim Ibrahim a/k/a/ Chris Hayes (boiler rooms, 2024)	SEC	2024-06-12	Boiler Rooms	—	filed
SEC v. Legend Venture Partners LLC (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-07-11	Boiler Rooms	—	filed
SEC v. Vuuzle Media Corp., Vuuzle Media Corp. Limited, Ronald Shane Flynn, and Richard Marchitto (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-06-27	Boiler Rooms	$25.8m	judgment
SEC v. Matthew Nicosia, William Reininger, Fabrizio Di Carlo, and Ronald Touchard (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-04-10	Boiler Rooms	$223k	judgment
SEC v. Joseph R. Earle Jr, Barry D. Reagh, William Clayton, Francis T. Dudley, Steven E. Bryant, Upper Street Marketing, Inc. and Project Growth International, Inc. (boiler rooms, 2022)	SEC	2022-12-05	Boiler Rooms , Pump And Dump	—	filed

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