The Securities and Exchange Commission charged 38 firms with filing material misrepresentations in their Forms ADV. The SEC alleges that the goal was to falsely portray themselves as legitimate advisory firms to U.S. investors.
There were a similar half-dozen of these cases at the end of 2025. In the Bluesky Case, the SEC went to the building listed as its address and couldn’t find the firm. It claimed it was on the 52nd floor. But that floor was a mechanical floor with no tenants.
These new 38 cases look to be all coming out of Colorado. It looks like the firms were using the status of SEC registration to give themselves a patina of legitimacy. Pinnacle Crypto even put together that terrible certificate to show its SEC registration status. (How many typos and errors can you spot?)
This fake firm problem has clearly caught the attention of the SEC. The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Assistance has issued a new investor alert warning investors that scammers are using filings to create a false impression of legitimacy to lure investors into scams. “Investors should be wary of a purported ERA that offers investment advice directly to individual investors.”
There were a few standard datapoints across the 38 fraudsters. They claimed
- to use “Indicator Global” as the auditor of their private funds
- a gross asset value of either $78,960,522 or $48,960,522 (only the first digit is different between the two figures)
- either 89 or 33 investors
That should make it relatively easy for the SEC to scour the Form ADV database to find other similar firms.
Sources:
- SEC: 38 Entities Feigned Legitimacy as U.S. Advisers Through False Filings to Lure Retail Investors
- Scammers Using SEC Exempt Reporting Adviser (ERA) Filings to Look Legitimate – Investor Alert
- BlueSky Eagle and the Ghost Filing
- SEC Charges Six Investment Advisers with Making Misrepresentations in Forms Filed with the Agency