Parker Terrill Austin joined January Capital Advisors in September 2020 as an investment adviser, holding Series 7 and Series 66 qualifications and a California insurance licence. By early 2023 he had decided to leave and start his own firm. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, he began preparing by emailing client information from his work address to his personal address, including client names, contact details, account balances and the fees the firm was charging them. He eventually sent January Capital’s entire customer relationship database to the man who would become his co-founder at Embarcadero Capital Advisors, Inc. Separately, during 2023, he placed roughly 100 clients into a risky investment strategy that neither January Capital nor the clients themselves had approved. The firm discovered that investment in September 2023, audited his email, and fired him in December. He launched Embarcadero out of Laguna Hills the following month. On August 19, 2026, United States District Judge Fred W. Slaughter entered final judgments against both Austin and the firm.
The judgments order Austin to pay a civil penalty of $118,225 and enjoin him from acting as, or being associated with, any broker, dealer or investment adviser for three years. Embarcadero must pay $25,000 in disgorgement, $2,505.06 in prejudgment interest and a $120,000 civil penalty, bringing total monetary sanctions to $265,725. Both consented without admitting or denying the allegations. Both are permanently enjoined from violating Sections 206(1), 206(2) and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act, and Austin from violating Rule 10 of Regulation S-P.
One Hundred Clients and a Strategy Nobody Approved
The conduct that ended his employment had nothing to do with the data. According to the SEC, Austin placed about 100 January Capital clients into a risky investment strategy that his employer had not approved and that the clients had not agreed to. In at least one instance the complaint describes, a client gave him instructions and he did not follow them, placing the client instead in convertible bonds and long-term United States government securities.
An investment adviser is a fiduciary. The obligation is not merely to avoid losing money but to act on the client’s actual instructions and in the client’s interest. Putting a hundred people into a strategy they never agreed to is a breach of that duty whether or not the strategy performs. January Capital found the investment in September 2023, and what it found next came from auditing his email.
The Entire Database
What the email audit surfaced was a pattern running back to early 2023. Austin had been sending client information from his work account to his personal account: names, contact information, account balances, the fees January Capital charged. He then forwarded material to his future business partner at Embarcadero. The SEC alleges he ultimately transferred the firm’s complete customer relationship database.
That is the conduct behind the Regulation S-P count. Rule 10 of Regulation S-P requires advisers to protect client nonpublic personal information and prohibits sharing it with unaffiliated third parties without notice and an opportunity to opt out. The clients whose balances and fee arrangements were forwarded had no idea, and were given no chance to object.
There is a commercial logic to it that explains the whole sequence. An adviser leaving to start a firm needs clients, and the most valuable asset at the old firm is not the advice, it is the list. Account balances tell you whom to approach first. Fee schedules tell you what to undercut.
A Clean-Record Filing After a Termination
Embarcadero completed its SEC registration on January 9, 2024, five weeks after Austin was fired. To bring clients across, he had to explain why he had left. According to the SEC, what he published instead was a Form CRS, the client relationship summary every adviser must provide, stating that the firm and its partners had clean records. The document was an old one, prepared before his termination.
That is the misrepresentation at the centre of the Advisers Act charges. Form CRS exists so a prospective client can see an adviser’s disciplinary history before handing over money. Publishing a stale version that predates the event a client would most want to know about defeats the only purpose the document has. The SEC also alleged misrepresentation of his disciplinary history and termination on Embarcadero’s website and in brochures the firm filed with the Commission.
Then He Blamed His Assistant
When the SEC opened its investigation in 2024, Austin filed an amended Form U4, the uniform application through which industry professionals report disciplinary matters. In it, according to reporting on the case, he attributed the data breach to his assistant and characterised his own failing as not having reported it.
A U4 is a regulatory filing, and amending one to shift responsibility onto a subordinate is a separate act from the conduct it describes. The emails the SEC relies on were sent from Austin’s work address to Austin’s personal address. The assistant does not appear anywhere in the Commission’s account of who sent what.
Where the Money Goes
The final judgment against Embarcadero contemplates that the disgorgement, interest and penalty may be distributed under the Fair Fund provisions of Section 308(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with the court retaining jurisdiction over any distribution plan. That would direct the money toward harmed investors rather than the Treasury.
Austin’s three-year bar is the more consequential sanction. It is not permanent, which means he may return to the industry in 2029. Prospective clients then will be able to check his record, which is the entire point of the filings he is said to have falsified. The public adviser and broker records exist precisely so that a termination in December 2023 is visible to someone considering him in 2030.
Conclusion
Parker Austin spent 2023 preparing to leave January Capital, emailing himself client names, balances and fee schedules and sending the firm’s whole customer database to his future partner. Along the way he put around a hundred clients into a strategy neither they nor his employer had approved. The firm found it in September, read his email, and fired him in December. Five weeks later his own firm was registered, publishing a client relationship summary that said its partners had clean records. When the regulator came asking, he filed an amended U4 pointing at his assistant. He pays $118,225 and cannot work in the industry until 2029. Embarcadero pays $147,505.06.
