The SEC Quietly Deleted the Record That Proves It Walked Away From My Case

There is a page that used to live on the SEC's own website. It was called Litigation Release No. 24962. It documented the moment the agency formally stopped pursuing its case against me.

That page is gone.

It was not archived. It was not moved. It was not replaced with a note explaining where it went. It was quietly deleted from sec.gov, with no notice, no explanation, and no acknowledgment.

The only reason anyone can still read it today is that the Internet Archive captured a copy before the SEC took it down.

I am writing about this publicly because the question of what a regulator is allowed to erase from its own public record is not a private question. It belongs to every person and every business the SEC has ever charged.

The facts of the underlying case are simple, and they are on the record.

On March 23, 2016, the SEC charged me with alleged securities violations.

On December 13, 2017, the civil complaint was dismissed.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals later reinstated the case on procedural grounds — not on the merits.

Then, on October 21, 2020, the SEC formally abandoned the case by declining to file a second amended complaint.

That decision was not a footnote in a court docket. The agency itself documented it publicly, in its own voice, in Litigation Release No. 24962. The release sat at sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr-24962 — the same URL pattern the agency uses for every other litigation release it has ever published.

If you visit that SEC URL today, the page is gone.

There is no redirect. There is no notice that the document was withdrawn. There is no replacement release explaining what happened to the case. The number 24962 simply does not exist on the SEC's website anymore.

What does exist is a snapshot the Internet Archive captured on March 27, 2021. Anyone can still read the SEC's own words about abandoning the case here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210327084517/www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2020/lr24962.htm

Think about what that means. The only surviving copy of the SEC's public statement that it dropped its case against me is hosted by a private nonprofit library — not by the agency that wrote it.

Both URLs below point to the same document — Litigation Release No. 24962. One is the SEC's original public-record page. The other is the Internet Archive's snapshot of that page, captured before the SEC removed it.

Lawyers have a word for what happens when a party destroys material that helps the other side. They call it spoliation.

Litigation Release No. 24962 is exculpatory by its nature. It is the SEC's own announcement that the agency chose not to keep fighting. In any future matter — civil, criminal, administrative, or reputational — that public record is the single best piece of evidence that the SEC's case against me ended without a judgment, without a settlement, and without an admission.

Deleting that record from the official source does real damage. It makes it harder for journalists to verify the disposition. It makes it harder for courts and juries in related matters to see the full picture. It makes it easier for the agency's critics, competitors, and anyone with a grudge to suggest that the case was something it was not.

That is not housekeeping. That is the destruction of evidence the public is entitled to see.

There is a second layer to this that lawyers will recognize immediately.

If the deletion of Litigation Release No. 24962 happened while related litigation was still active — and if the SEC did not disclose the deletion to the court or to the other parties — that is not a clerical issue. That is a transparency problem with real consequences.

Regulators do not get to selectively erase records that contradict the story they are telling in court. The Commission cannot stand in front of a judge and present itself as a neutral steward of the public record while quietly deleting the document that proves it walked away from one of its own cases.

Either the record is permanent or the record is propaganda. There is no third option.

The SEC's authority depends on a single idea — that the agency operates on the facts, not on the narrative.

When the agency wins a case, it issues a press release. When the agency loses a case, the loss is also supposed to be on the record. That symmetry is what gives every other SEC announcement its weight. Take the symmetry away and the entire public-facing apparatus turns into marketing.

Deleting Litigation Release No. 24962, without explanation, sends a message to every defendant the agency has ever pursued — that the SEC is willing to revise the record when the record stops being convenient. That is not a small problem. That is a foundation problem.

I am formally requesting the following from the SEC, on the record, in writing.

First — who authorized the deletion of Litigation Release No. 24962 from sec.gov?

Second — why was the deletion carried out, and why was the subject of the release never notified?

Third — under what statute, regulation, or internal policy does the Commission claim the authority to remove official litigation records from public access without notice?

Fourth — will the SEC restore Litigation Release No. 24962 to its original location, and if not, will the Commission issue a formal written acknowledgment of the removal that can be cited in court?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the minimum any regulated person is entitled to ask of the regulator.

I have written before about the SEC quietly walking away from cases it spent years building. The dismissals of the unregistered-dealer matters in 2025 followed the same pattern — a retreat without admission, a policy change without explanation.

The deletion of Litigation Release No. 24962 fits the same shape. The agency was happy to publish the release when it wrote itself out of a case on its own terms. Years later, when the surrounding narrative shifted, the release became inconvenient. So it disappeared.

Every defendant whose case the SEC has ever dropped, settled, or lost should care about this. If the agency can selectively erase the records that document its own retreats, then the official archive on sec.gov is no longer a record at all. It is a curated story, edited in real time by the very institution it is supposed to hold accountable.

The Internet Archive should not be the last line of defense against a federal regulator rewriting its own history.

The SEC should restore Litigation Release No. 24962 to its original URL. The Commission should explain who ordered its removal and why. And the Commission should commit, in writing, to a policy that public litigation records are not deleted from sec.gov without notice and without a stated reason.

Until that happens, every reader is entitled to draw their own conclusion about why a regulator that built its reputation on transparency decided that one particular page about one particular case was not worth keeping online.

I have my own view. The public record — the one the SEC could not reach — speaks for itself.

This article reflects my personal opinion only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, investment, or tax advice. I am not a lawyer and I am not your lawyer. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship.

Statements about cases, agencies, courts, and individuals are based on publicly reported materials, court filings, and archived government records. Anyone facing a regulatory or criminal matter should consult experienced counsel about their specific situation.