A California investment advisor allegedly stole money from a client, bought a Camaro with some of the money and, more than a year later, sold the car back to the same client, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday in announcing fraud charges against the advisor.

Mark J. Boucher and his one-person company, Strategic Wealth Advisor Group Services, also calling itself "SWAG," in Carlsbad, Calif., stole a total of $2.2 million from retail clients, according to the SEC. Boucher created the firm in 2015. The SEC is asking for disgorgement of all ill-gotten funds.

In addition to the car scheme, Boucher allegedly took more than $1.5 million from another client’s trust funds and attempted “to convince SEC staff that the client had gifted him the funds a few days before she died,” in part by forging a letter, the SEC said.

He used the misappropriated money to pay for “extravagant personal expenses, including vacations and travel” and to pay off credit cards, the SEC said.

Boucher created personal relationships with his clients by inviting them to his home and visiting them in their homes, the complaint says. He had 80 to 100 clients at any given time, mostly individuals and small businesses, according to the complaint.

In one case involving a couple, Boucher knew the husband reviewed his account statements, but the wife did not review hers. “Accordingly, Boucher did not steal any money from the husband’s accounts, but misappropriated at least $230,577” from the wife’s accounts, the complaint charges. After the husband passed away in May 2017, he continued to manage the wife’s accounts while becoming a friend to the client, “helping [her] with personal errands and various household projects on his bi-monthly visits to her home,” the complaint alleges.

One client had placed her assets in a revocable trust and, except for personal expenses, the trust upon her death was to go to the sole beneficiary, Canine Companions for Independence, a nonprofit organization that provides service dogs free of charge to adults, children and veterans with disabilities. Boucher was named as trustee, the SEC said. From August through December, 2019, “Boucher opened several new bank and advisory accounts in the name of the trust ... and transferred over $1.8 million to the new accounts he created,” alleges the complaint, which was filed in Federal District Court for the Southern District of California.