Washington, D.C., Dec. 1, 2011 — As part of an initiative to combat hedge fund fraud by identifying abnormal investment performance, the Securities and Exchange Commission today announced enforcement actions against three separate advisory firms and six individuals for various misconduct including improper use of fund assets, fraudulent valuations, and misrepresenting fund returns.
Under the initiative — the Aberrational Performance Inquiry — the SEC Enforcement Division’s Asset Management Unit uses proprietary risk analytics to evaluate hedge fund returns. Performance that appears inconsistent with a fund’s investment strategy or other benchmarks forms a basis for further scrutiny.
In particular, the SEC alleges that the firms and managers engaged in a wide variety of illegal practices in the management of hedge funds or private pooled investment vehicles, including fraudulent valuation of portfolio holdings, misuse of fund assets, and misrepresentations to investors about critical attributes such as performance, assets, liquidity, investment strategy, valuation procedures, and conflicts of interest.
“We’re using risk analytics and unconventional methods to help achieve the holy grail of securities law enforcement — earlier detection and prevention,” said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “This approach, especially in the absence of a tip or complaint, minimizes both the number of victims and the amount of loss while increasing the chance of recovering funds and charging the perpetrators.”
Robert Kaplan and Bruce Karpati, Co-Chiefs of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Asset Management Unit, added, “The extraordinary returns reported by these advisers and portfolio managers were, in most cases, too good to be true. In other cases, outlier returns were a telltale sign that something else was amiss. We are applying analytics across the investment adviser space — beyond performance and beyond hedge funds.”
The SEC has filed several enforcement actions to date stemming from this initiative. Of the four actions announced today, three were filed in federal court and one was brought as an administrative proceeding.
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