An unregistered Florida investment advisor has been charged with hiding his criminal background from investors and taking $1 million from two funds he managed, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday.

Steven Zoernack of Nokomis, Fla., hid the fact that he had two felony fraud convictions, a bankruptcy filing and other money judgments and liens against him from the investors he solicited for two funds he managed, Global Partners Fund LLC and Momentum Growth Fund LLC. Both funds were managed through Zoernack’s company, EquityStar.

According to the SEC, his offenses included such things as brazenly providing false information to the rating agency Morningstar to gain the title of a “Morningstar Five Star Rated Fund” for Momentum. For example, he reported to Morningstar that the Momentum fund had been in existence for years longer than it actually had been and that its assets were more than 40 times higher than they actually were.

He also hired a firm to manipulate Internet search results and gave the firm false information, saying he was a successful fund manager, investor and philanthropist. This made it harder for potential investors to discover information about Zoernack’s criminal convictions and other negative information about him, the SEC says.

The SEC charges that he withdrew more than $1 million from the funds without authorization, and without disclosing his withdrawals to investors and that he falsely characterized the withdrawals as assets of the funds.

Zoernack and EquityStar fraudulently sold at least $5.6 million of interests in Momentum and Global Partners to more than 40 investors in about 20 states and two foreign countries, the SEC says.