A former Nashville, Tenn., advisor who falsely claimed that his two-year-old firm handled $11.5 trillion in assets under management has agreed to be banned from the industry, the SEC announced.

Ruben Cedrick Williams, 31, who served as co-owner, CEO and CCO of Vista Financial Advisors agreed to the SEC penalties without admitting to or denying the charges, the agency said today.

Williams claimed on his 2022 Form ADV filing that Vista had assets of $10 billion, a figure that ballooned to $11.5 trillion on his 2023 ADV filing, according to the SEC’s complaint, filed last September. He failed to provide any evidence to corroborate those claims, the SEC alleged.

During an investigation by the division of examinations into the 2022 ADV filing, Williams requested repeated adjournments to produce the information to back up his claim, the SEC said, and at one point ceased communication with the exams team.

The probe found that he was ineligible to register with the SEC because he did not meet the $25 million threshold, the SEC said. The exams team also found that he reported false information on the ADV about the firm’s AUM and he did not identify one of three other co-owners of the firm, the SEC said.

Williams, the complaint said, responded to the exams team findings in November 22, indicating that he was “in the  process of transferring certain client assets to new custodians” and would provide bank and brokerage statements to support the claimed AUM. That  never happened, the SEC said.

In February 2023, the division of enforcement served Williams with investigative subpoenas and gave him a May deadline to answer the subpoenas and appear for testimony, the SEC said. He again requested and was granted additional adjournments, the complaint said.

Williams, the complaint said, responded in April 2023 with a new ADV filing, which showed that Vista’s AUM had grown to $11.5 trillion. Again, the documents failed to verify the claim, the agency said.

“To date, Defendants have failed to produce any documents in response to the Commission’s investigative subpoenas seeking the production of documents or information relating to Vista’s assets under management,” the complaint said.

Williams could not be reached for comment.