SEC Charges New Jersey Man With Fraudulently Causing Advisory Firm to Overbill Clients

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed charges against the former chief operating officer (COO) of a Commission-registered investment adviser for aiding and abetting the advisory firm’s actions to overbill its clients as part of a fraudulent scheme to improperly inflate his own pay. According to the SEC’s complaint, between 2011 and December 2018, former COO Richard T. Diver, a resident of Spring Lake, New Jersey, engaged in an illicit scheme to steal approximately $6 million from his employer. Diver, whose duties included managing the advisory firm’s payroll and client billing functions, allegedly inflated his salary by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.