A Wisconsin investment advisor has been permanently barred from the financial industry for a cherry-picking scheme that netted him hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits while leaving his clients with losses, the SEC said Friday.
Mark P. Wellhouse and his firm, Wellhouse & Associates Inc., an investment advisory firm in Appleton, Wisc., have also been ordered to pay $742,00 in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and penalties. Wellhouse has agreed to the settlement.
Wellhouse placed his own and clients’ investments in an S&P 500 ETF known as SPY. He cherry picked the investments that made money for himself, making $455,000, and left the losing accounts in the clients’ names costing them $427,000, the SEC complaint says. He did not tell clients how he was making the investments and told the SEC he was assigning the investments equitably.