J.P. Morgan fined for prohibiting harmed customers from contacting the SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission of the U.S. (the SEC) recently fined J.P. Morgan Securities $18,000,000 for taking various steps to prevent securities whistleblowers from contacting the SEC or other securities regulators. J.P. Morgan agreed to the Order which can be found here.

The alleged wrongdoing centered on the language included by J.P. Morgan in its settlement agreements with its advisory and brokerage firm customers to which it paid over $1,000.00. Virtually all FINRA securities firms and Registered Investment Advisors require a confidentiality clause to be included in any settlement agreement with a customer. These settlement agreements are often the result of various misconduct by the firms or their advisors, such as securities fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, unauthorized trading, broker theft, recommended unsuitable investments, and churning. The reason why securities firms always require their settlements to be confidential is clear – they wish to hide their misconduct and the misconduct of their advisors from the public. FINRA’s Brokercheck report does require firms to disclose settlements with advisors/firms, but the details are often extremely general, and one has to look up the broker directly to find the disclosures.

According to the SEC Order, from 2020 to 2023 J.P. Morgan included language in 362 release agreements that prohibited customers not only from disclosing the amount of the settlement to the SEC, but also prohibited disclosing the facts related to the account (i.e. the misconduct). Although the releases did allow disclosure to the SEC in response to an inquiry, it did not allow the customers to initiate contact with the SEC.

These actions allegedly violated the SEC protections for securities whistleblowers, and as stated by the SEC in the Order: “JPMS willfully violated Exchange Act Rule 21F-17(a), which prohibits any person from taking any action to impede an individual from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation.”

In addition to the fine, J.P.Morgan was required to advise its customers that they were allowed to contact the SEC directly.

If you were the victim of misconduct of a securities brokerage firm or financial advisor/broker resulting in the loss of your monies, please contact investment fraud attorney Scott Greco for a free attorney consultation about your potential case.