GWFS Equities to Pay SEC $1.5 Million for Alleged SAR Failures

GWFS Equities Inc. agreed Wednesday to pay a $1.5 million fine to resolve SEC allegations it failed to file certain suspicious activity reports and left important information out of others.

The broker-dealer, which services employer-sponsored retirement plans, failed to file about 130 SARs from September 2015 through October 2018, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement order. GWFS didn’t admit to the agency’s findings in settling.

GWFS allegedly “began detecting increasing numbers of attempts by bad actors to gain unauthorized access to the retirement accounts,” the order said. The firm “detected most of these attempts before the bad ...