SEC v. James Goodland and Securus Wealth Management, LLC (marking the close, 2015)

Settled

✓ 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-james-goodland-and-securus-wealth-management-llc-marking-the-close-2015) by email

In September 2015 the SEC settled with investment adviser Securus Wealth Management and its president James Goodland for failing to supervise and to maintain adequate compliance controls over an adviser representative who, the order finds, supported the price of Gatekeeper USA stock, including by marking the close. Goodland paid a $30,000 penalty and accepted a supervisory bar; Securus was censured.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$30k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$30k

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 issued this settled order on September 30, 2015 as file 3-16878. The respondents are James Goodland and Securus Wealth Management, LLC (1 individual, 1 entity), who neither admitted nor denied the findings.

The charge against these respondents is supervisory, not manipulation by them. The order finds that from January 2010 through July 2013 an advisory representative, Howard Richards, put over $1 million of client money into thinly traded Gatekeeper USA stock while running a scheme to support its price, and that he frequently marked the close, placing the day's last trade in the stock. Securus and Goodland, who supervised Richards, failed to review his emails, to respond to red flags and to monitor his trading, and were found to have violated Section 206(4) and Rule 206(4)-7. Richards was the subject of a separate proceeding.

Goodland must pay a $30,000 penalty and is barred from supervisory and compliance roles; Securus is censured. An earlier version also tagged this record as a reverse-merger scheme because the order mentions in one sentence that Gatekeeper was formed through a reverse merger in 2007. That is background, and the tag has been removed.

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.

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

Timeline

1. 2015-09-30 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.