SEC Charges Investment Adviser With Running $3.9 Million Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former registered representative and investment adviser in Altoona, Pennsylvania, with operating a long-running offering fraud. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Douglas P. Simanski raised over $3.9 million from approximately 27 of his brokerage customers and investment advisory clients, many of them retired or elderly, by telling them that he would invest their money in either a “tax free” fixed rate investment, a rental car company, or one of two coal mining companies in which Simanski claimed to have an ownership interest. He allegedly told the investors to write checks payable to personal bank and brokerage accounts he opened in his wife’s name.