SEC v. Michael Bresner, Ralph Calabro, Jason Konner and Dimitrios Koutsoubos (churning, 2013)

Judgment entered

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In November 2013 an SEC administrative law judge found, after a 17-day hearing, that three former J.P. Turner & Co. brokers, Ralph Calabro, Jason Konner and Dimitrios Koutsoubos, each churned one customer account, and that branch manager Michael Bresner failed to supervise two of them. The decision orders industry bars, $367,000 of combined disgorgement and $435,000 of combined civil penalties.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$435k

Disgorgement

$367k

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$802k

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

An SEC administrative law judge issued Initial Decision No. 517 in administrative proceeding 3-15015 on November 8, 2013, after a hearing held in early 2013. The four respondents are Michael Bresner, Ralph Calabro, Jason Konner and Dimitrios Koutsoubos (4 individuals, 0 entities). The proceeding was litigated, not settled.

The order instituting proceedings alleged that Calabro, Konner and Koutsoubos churned seven customer accounts at J.P. Turner & Co. between 2008 and 2009. The judge found churning in three of them, one for each broker: the account of Dudley Williams for Calabro, of James Carlson for Konner and of Teddy Bryant for Koutsoubos. The remaining four accounts were found not to have been churned. Bresner was found to have failed reasonably to supervise Konner and Koutsoubos.

The decision orders Calabro, Konner and Koutsoubos to cease and desist and bars them from the securities industry. It orders disgorgement of $282,000 from Calabro, $55,000 from Konner and $30,000 from Koutsoubos, plus prejudgment interest, and civil penalties of $150,000, $150,000 and $130,000 against those three. Bresner receives a supervisory bar and a $5,000 penalty. The record stores the combined totals, $367,000 of disgorgement and $435,000 of penalties; no single respondent owes either figure. The linked finality notice records that the decision became final.

The conduct is recorded against bonds, equities and options. For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

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. 2013-11-08 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-517)
• 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.