SEC v. Louis Martin Blazer III (2016)

Settled

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In May 2016 the SEC charged Pittsburgh financial adviser Louis Martin Blazer III with taking about $2.35 million from five professional athlete clients without authorization to invest in two movie projects, and with lying to SEC examiners. He agreed to settle, with money terms left to the court.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-23534
Date filed	2016-05-06
Date resolved	2016-05-06
Status	settled
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Louis Martin Blazer III (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Advisers Act s.206 ; Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.17(a) (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

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 complaint, filed May 6, 2016 in Manhattan, alleges the withdrawals funded films in which Blazer had a personal interest, and that when one client demanded repayment he repaid him with money from another athlete's account in Ponzi-like fashion. He then produced false deal documents when examiners asked about the withdrawals.

Blazer settled without admitting or denying, subject to court approval, with disgorgement and penalties to be set later. The single Ponzi-like repayment is incidental to an unauthorized-trading and false-documents case, so the ponzi-schemes tag has been removed.

Timeline

2016-05-06 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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.