American Electric Power Company, Inc. (AEP), a New York-incorporated public utility holding company with its principal place of business in Columbus, Ohio, has agreed to pay $19M to resolve Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it made fraudulent disclosures about its role in the House Bill 6 political corruption scandal, the same bribery scheme that sent former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to prison for 20 years and cost FirstEnergy $230M in federal penalties. AEP formed, fully funded, and controlled Empowering Ohio’s Economy, Inc., a 501(c)(4) dark money organization that served as a conduit for nearly $1.2M in payments directed to political organizations associated with Ohio politicians.
AEP contributed $8.7M to Empowering Ohio as its sole source of funding since 2015, with AEP employees actively directing where the money went. When HB 6’s corruption became public in July 2020 and journalists and investors asked about AEP’s involvement, the company issued a press release with statements the SEC found materially misleading about AEP’s payments to politician-linked 501(c)(4) organizations. AEP also failed to disclose its financial relationship with Empowering Ohio in its Form 10-K as a material related party transaction. The SEC charged the company in January 2025. The $19M penalty is now being distributed to investors who bought AEP common stock between January 1, 2018 and June 7, 2021.
AEP Created Empowering Ohio as a Vehicle to Fund Political Activity While Maintaining Distance
Empowering Ohio’s Economy was not an independent organization. AEP formed it, provided every dollar it received, and had its own employees direct its contributions. Tom Froehle, AEP’s Vice President of Government Affairs, sat on Empowering Ohio’s board of directors and actively lobbied in support of HB 6 in 2019. The 501(c)(4) structure was chosen because such organizations are not required to disclose their donors, creating a layer of separation between AEP and the political payments its money was funding.
According to the SEC’s order, AEP employees directed Empowering Ohio to contribute $1.2M to 501(c)(4) organizations associated with politicians. Among those recipients was Generation Now, the dark money group controlled by Householder that served as the central vehicle for the $60M FirstEnergy bribery scheme. Empowering Ohio sent $700,000 to Generation Now, connecting AEP’s money to the same network of political payments that federal prosecutors described as the largest corruption case in Ohio history.
AEP Was the Largest Beneficiary of HB 6’s Coal Subsidies and Stood to Gain Most from Its Passage
AEP’s financial interest in HB 6 was not incidental. The company is the largest shareholder of the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC), which operates two aging coal-fired power plants in Ohio and Indiana. HB 6, passed in July 2019, codified ratepayer-funded subsidies for the OVEC coal plants, locking in a revenue stream for a power generation business that was struggling to compete on the open market. AEP, together with AES Ohio and Duke Energy Ohio, has collected nearly $450M in OVEC coal subsidies from Ohio ratepayers since 2020 alone, according to the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.
While FirstEnergy was the primary architect of HB 6 and the entity that paid $60M to Householder to pass it, AEP had its own financial stake in the legislation and its own funding relationship with the dark money ecosystem surrounding it. Unlike FirstEnergy, AEP was not charged with criminal conduct or with paying bribes to Householder. The SEC’s action was limited to the company’s misleading investor disclosures and its failure to properly account for Empowering Ohio as a related party.
A July 2020 Press Release Denied Payments to Politician-Linked Groups That AEP Had Funded for Years
When Householder was arrested by the FBI on July 21, 2020, and the $60M bribery scheme became public, AEP responded with a press release. The SEC found that press release materially misleading. Specifically, the commission found that AEP’s statements created the false impression that AEP had not made payments to 501(c)(4) organizations associated with politicians. In reality, AEP had been directing exactly those kinds of payments through Empowering Ohio for years. The press release did not disclose that AEP was Empowering Ohio’s sole funder or that AEP employees had directed the group’s political contributions.
The SEC also found that AEP failed to disclose its payments to Empowering Ohio as material related party transactions in its Form 10-K. A related party transaction disclosure is required when a company has a material financial relationship with an entity it controls, which Empowering Ohio clearly was. By omitting this disclosure, AEP left investors without the information they needed to evaluate the company’s exposure to the HB 6 scandal. AEP settled without admitting or denying the findings. No individuals were charged.
The $19M Fair Fund Will Reach AEP Investors Who Bought During the Misleading Disclosure Period
The SEC’s Fair Fund covers investors who purchased AEP common stock between January 1, 2018 and June 7, 2021, the period during which the misleading statements and omissions inflated the stock price. The proposed distribution plan, published on May 1, 2026 with a 30-day public comment window, provides for the $19M penalty plus accrued interest to be distributed to eligible claimants according to a methodology that accounts for per-share inflation during the relevant period.
AEP accrued the full $19M penalty in the third quarter of 2024 before the order was formally issued in January 2025, reflecting the company’s expectation of the settlement’s outcome. The penalty represents a fraction of the $450M in coal subsidies AEP and its partners have collected under the legislation its dark money contributions helped pass. The OVEC coal subsidies were finally repealed in August 2025 when House Bill 15 was signed into law by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.
Conclusion
The AEP case closes a second major chapter in the HB 6 enforcement timeline, following FirstEnergy’s $100M SEC penalty approved for distribution in the same week. Both cases center on the same political bribery ecosystem, the same dark money conduit structure, and the same pattern of investor disclosures that obscured each company’s financial and political entanglements. AEP did not bribe Householder. But it formed a shell organization to channel political money, directed $1.2M of it to politician-linked groups including Householder’s own network, and then told investors it had done none of those things. The $19M penalty heading to investors who held AEP stock during those years is the SEC’s price for that combination.
