SEC Bars Advisor for Working With Revoked Registration, Touting False Designation

The Securities and Exchange Commission has barred an investment advisor representative who was doing business despite having her registration revoked and for falsely stating she’d earned an “IRA Distribution Specialist” designation.

According to the SEC order, since June 2005, Carla Lea Chastain, 56, was the principal of Chastain Financial LLC, through which she conducted investment advisory and insurance business.

On May 25, 2005, Chastain agreed to a consent order issued by the Arkansas Securities Department revoking her registration as an IAR, and suspending her registration as an agent of a broker-dealer for 180 days based on suitability and churning violations, the SEC order states.

Because Chastain failed to comply with the 2005 order’s conditions of reinstatement, the SEC said, “her registration as an agent of a broker-dealer has remained suspended.”

On Dec. 13, 2016, Chastain agreed to a consent order issued by the Arkansas Securities Department, which found she committed securities fraud in violation of Arkansas law, “in connection with the offer of investment adviser services by making false and misleading statements of a material fact by holding herself out” as an IAR when her registration had been revoked.