A California financial advisor is charged with defrauding his professional athlete clients out of more than $33 million and putting the money into a ticket issuing business, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday.

Ash Narayan, along with the company, The Ticket Reserve Inc., its CEO Richard M. Harmon and chief operating officer John A. Kaptrosky, are charged in the SEC complaint. The SEC obtained a court order freezing the assets of the defendants.

Narayan, who is from Newport Coast, Calif., sat on the board of the struggling ticket company, which sold sports and entertainment tickets, the SEC says. He secretly siphoned millions of dollars from accounts he managed for the athletes, sometimes using forged signatures, the SEC says. The complaint did not name the athletes.

According to the complaint, The Ticket Reserve became dependent on the fraudulent cash infusions from Narayan’s unsuspecting clients to stay in business, and in exchange Narayan received nearly $2 million in hidden compensation from the company, most of it directly traceable to funds stolen from his clients.

The Ticket Reserve also made Ponzi-like payments to existing investors using money from new investors, the SEC says.

“We allege that Narayan exploited athletes and other clients who trusted him to manage their finances.  He fraudulently funneled their savings into a money-losing business and his own pocket,” says Shamoil T. Shipchandler, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office.

Narayan was a managing director in the California office of Dallas-based investment advisory firm RGT Capital Management. Harmon and Kaptrosky participated in the scheme by making undisclosed finder’s fee payments to Narayan out of his clients’ funds and covertly describing them as director's fees and loans in various company documents, according to the SEC.

Lanny J. Davis, attorney for Harmon, said in a statement, “Neither Rick Harmon nor his cheif operating office, John Kaptrosky, did anything wrong while Mr. Harmon was CEO of The Ticket Reserve, and they and the company were in fact victims of someone else‘s alleged wrongdoing. Mr. Harmon and Mr. Kaptrosky look forward to continuing to cooperate with the SEC to resolve this matter as soon as possible.”