San Diego-based investment adviser Raymond Lucia’s request that the court consider his challenge to the constitutionality of the SEC’s use of in-house courts was recently rejected by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lucia, a well-known investment adviser with a long career, was charged by the SEC with conducting misleading investment seminars that promoted a “buckets of money” investing strategy that was purportedly supported by empirical testing, when no such reliable testing had been done. The SEC proceeding resulted in what Lucia’s own attorneys described as a “career-ending lifetime industry bar”.

The SEC just announced that a Houston technology solutions company agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty to settle charges that it overstated profits, as well as that two former executives of the company agreed to settle charges of causing the violations.