SEC v. Virtu Americas LLC — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Litigation Release No. 26427, dated December 3, 2025.
Virtu Americas LLC, a broker-dealer, allegedly failed to implement proper policies to prevent its proprietary traders from accessing sensitive customer order information. This allowed potential misuse of material nonpublic information. Virtu Americas settled with the SEC, agreeing to a $2.5 million penalty and an injunction.
Imagine a store that sells items for its customers and also has its own employees who buy and sell items for the store itself. This store promised customers that their private information about what they were buying or selling would be kept secret. However, the store didn't put up good enough walls to keep that secret information from its own employees who were buying and selling for the store. This meant those employees could have seen what customers were doing and used that information to make their own trades. The store has now agreed to pay a fine and promised to fix its security.
Disclaimer: all facts are drawn from the SEC's own filings; the claims described are allegations unless and until a court rules or the parties settle, and some cases end in dismissal.
SEC Obtains Final Consent Judgment as to Virtu Broker-Dealer Regarding Alleged Failure to Establish, Maintain, and Enforce Policies and Procedures Reasonably Designed to Prevent Misuse of Its Customers’ Material Nonpublic Information. On December 2, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a final consent judgment in the SEC’s civil enforcement action against broker-dealer Virtu Americas LLC (“Virtu Americas”). Virtu Americas consented to entry of the judgment without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations. The SEC’s complaint, filed on September 12, 2023 (and amended January 12, 2024), alleged that Virtu Americas operated both a proprietary trading business, in which it bought and sold securities in its own account and for its benefit, as well as a trade execution business for its large institutional customers, whereby it executed customer orders. The complaint alleged that from at least January 2018 through April 2019, Virtu Americas failed to establish, maintain, and enforce policies and procedures reasonably designed to ensure that its proprietary traders could not access material nonpublic information of Virtu Americas’ customer orders – including, among other things, the customer name, the security name, the side (buy or sell), and the execution price and volume – maintained in a primary database for daily business operations and a backup database. Without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations against it, Virtu Americas consented to the entry of a final judgment that permanently enjoins it from violating Section 15(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and orders it to pay a civil monetary penalty of $2.5 million. Pursuant to the terms of the settlement, the Commission agreed to the dismissal with prejudice of all other claims and relief sought against Virtu Americas and of all claims and relief sought against its parent, Virtu Financial, Inc. The litigation was led by Damon Taaffe and Zachary Avallone under the supervision of James Carlson. The investigation was conducted by Alexandra M. Arango and David A. Becker of the Home Office and David Bennett and Paul Kim of the Market Abuse Unit.
Named in this action: Virtu Americas LLC.