SEC v. Baris Cabalar (churning, 2024)

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 October 2024 the SEC charged Baris Cabalar, a registered representative at PHX Financial, with recommending a short-term, high-volume strategy to eight retail customers from January 2019 to October 2021 without a reasonable basis, leaving them with losses above $1 million while he and the firm received over $400,000 in commissions. The charges include fraud and Regulation Best Interest; the claims were allegations.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 action on October 16, 2024 as litigation release LR-26161, filing civil action 1:24-cv-07274 in the Eastern District of New York. The defendant is Baris Cabalar (1 individual, 0 entities).

The complaint alleges that from January 2019 to October 2021 Cabalar recommended a short-term, high-volume investment strategy to eight PHX Financial retail customers with no reasonable basis to believe it could be profitable given its costs, which the SEC calls excessive trading. The customers' aggregate losses exceeded $1 million, while Cabalar and PHX together received over $400,000 in commissions and fees. The SEC charges Securities Act Section 17(a), Exchange Act Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5, and Regulation Best Interest (Rule 15l-1).

The SEC seeks an injunction, disgorgement with interest and civil penalties. Nothing has been ordered, the commissions are not an alleged gain, and the allegations remain unproven. An earlier version showed the status as unknown.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no outcome found on SEC pages or the court docket. The docket (E.D.N.Y. 2:24-cv-07274) shows the court denying a motion to dismiss the Regulation Best Interest claim on July 10, 2026 and the defendant answering an amended complaint on October 2, 2026, so the case is still in the pleading and scheduling stage.

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.

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

Timeline

1. 2024-10-16 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
• Docket, SEC v. Cabalar (E.D.N.Y. 2:24-cv-07274), via CourtListener

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