SEC v. Laurence M. Torres (churning, 2017)

Settled

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In September 2017 the SEC settled with former Alexander Capital registered representative Laurence M. Torres, finding he recommended an unsuitable high-cost pattern of frequent trading to eight customers, misrepresented it, made unauthorized trades, and churned at least three accounts. He was barred from the industry and from penny stock offerings and ordered to pay $225,359 in disgorgement, $25,748 in interest and a $160,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$160k

Disgorgement

$225k

Prejudgment interest

$25.7k

Total relief

$411k

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 28, 2017 in administrative proceeding 3-18233. The respondent is Laurence M. Torres (1 individual, 0 entities), who neither admitted nor denied the findings.

The order finds that from August 2012 through September 2014, while a registered representative at Alexander Capital, L.P., Torres recommended a high-cost pattern of frequent trading to eight customers that he had no reasonable basis to believe suitable, misrepresented and omitted its costs, and traded without authorisation. It finds he churned the accounts of at least three of the eight, with annualised cost-to-equity ratios between 63 and 113 percent. Commissions, mark-ups and mark-downs often exceeded 3 percent of an equity trade, and all eight accounts lost money.

Torres was ordered to cease and desist from violating Securities Act Section 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5, was barred from the securities industry and from penny stock offerings, and must pay disgorgement of $225,359, prejudgment interest of $25,748 and a $160,000 civil penalty. An earlier version of this record omitted the disgorgement and interest.

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. 2017-09-28 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.