The U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission on Tuesday sued Virtu Financial, a
broker-dealer that handles 25% of all market orders placed by
retail investors in the U.S., for misleading customers.
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday sued Virtu Financial, a broker-dealer that handles 25% of all market orders placed by retail investors in the U.S., for misleading customers into believing it properly safeguarded their confidential information. In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, the SEC said Virtu repeatedly and falsely told customers that it used "information barriers" and "systemic separation between business groups" to protect their material nonpublic information. The SEC said that, in reality, "anyone" at the New York-based company's Virtu Americas unit could from January 2018 to April 2019 access sensitive information about customers and their trades by using generic user names and passwords.