SEC Gives Belden the Boot from Southmark

Wendell D. Belden, the former owner of SEC-registered brokerage firm Southmark Inc. of Tulsa, is permanently barred from having any affiliation or association with an investment adviser or broker-dealer.

Belden also owned Southmark’s SEC-registered investment adviser Southmark Advisory Inc. and a Bentonville office of the brokerage. But his son-in-law, Dale Penn, was installed as the companies’ president after the SEC and Belden reached a Nov. 21 agreement in federal court.

The settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing by Belden or Southmark, no financial penalty and the appointment of Bruce W. Day, an independent consultant in Oklahoma City, to oversee the companies’ procedures. But according to the Tulsa World, the settlement also stipulates that Belden and other defendants “cannot make public statements denying any allegation in the SEC’s Oct. 29 complaint or even “create the impression that the complaint is without factual basis.”

The SEC accused Southmark of defrauding more than 400 mostly elderly investment clients by using a “bait and switch” technique to lure investors with the promise of high-yielding certificate of deposit rates. When the customers arrived, the suit said, Southmark employees aggressively pitched the investors on high-load mutual funds.