A San Diego investment advisor has been fined $2.6 million and barred from the financial industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission for egregious acts of misleading clients and not conducting proper due diligence on funds he used, the SEC says.

Jacob Keith Cooper was the founder and owner of Total Wealth Management, a San Diego investment firm that, at its peak in 2009, had $90.2 million invested from 481 clients, the SEC says. Much of that money was lost, the SEC says.

Cooper put most of the clients’ money into the Atlus family of funds that he controlled. He did not reveal to clients that he controlled the funds, and that he received "revenue sharing fees" or kickbacks and consulting fees from the funds he was putting their money into, the SEC decision says.

Cooper, along with the chief compliance officer of Total Wealth, Nathan McNamee, and investment advisor representative Douglas Shoemaker, failed to disclose to clients the conflicts of interest created by the fee sharing and consultancy agreements as they recommended the underlying investments to clients and investors in the Altus family of funds, the SEC says.

The SEC has also charged McNamee, Shoemaker and Total Wealth with fraud in the scheme and is in the process of working out settlement agreements with them, SEC Chief Administrative Law Judge Brenda P. Murray said in the decision on Cooper, which was released Monday.

In rendering her decision following a three-day hearing, Murray described Cooper’s actions as glaring failures that showed he either intentionally concealed, or recklessly failed to disclose, his involvement with the funds he was investing his clients’ money in.

“Investment advisors owe a fiduciary duty of utmost good faith and full and fair disclosure to their clients,” Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office, said when the complaint was filed in April 2014. “Total Wealth violated that duty with its pervasive practice of placing clients in funds holding risky investments while concealing the revenue sharing fees they paid themselves.”

Murray described Cooper’s actions as egregious and self-serving and said the stiff penality, which included nearly $1 million in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, plus penalities and interest, was justified because of his lack of remorse and understanding.

The sanctions will “put others on notice that similar misconduct will not be tolerated,” Murray said.