A FINRA-suspended broker known as “K Money” was arrested and faces charges of defrauding social media followers of more than $800,000.
According to the Justice Department, Kenneth Thom was charged with securities and investment advisor fraud and faces 20 years in prison. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said that Thom “used social media to steal from investors.”
“If you’re getting investment advice from someone who is not registered as a broker or investment advisor, the risk of fraud is much higher,” he said.
Thom first registered in 2006, with brief stints at Joseph Stevens & Company, National Securities Corporation and Next Financial Group. In 2011, FINRA suspended him for failing to pay an arbitration penalty.
According to the DOJ, Thom also told investigators he’d co-mingled an investor’s money with his own in a brokerage account. He allegedly lost the funds and didn’t tell the investor (spending some of it on a Manhattan apartment), eventually ignoring the investor altogether.
When Thom was suspended, he re-invented himself as a successful trader on Facebook, calling himself “K$” or “K Money,” and touting his (false) bona fides as a “Wall Street Veteran,” a “luminary,” and a “beacon of knowledge,” the DOJ claimed.
According to the indictment, Thom offered subscriptions for trading lessons and daily trade suggestions, managing a Facebook group called the “K$ Trading Group.” Starting in 2023, he began managing client funds, posting in the group about a subscription with a “10K buy-in,” and quickly began accepting client deposits.
But from January through August 2024, Thom received about $786,234 from 67 clients, sending about $350,000 to brokerage accounts, less than half the total sum he promised to trade. Of the $46,234 he didn’t trade, he returned about $51,478 to nine clients, with his bank returning a further $10,000.
Thom used the remaining funds for dining at restaurants, travel, luxury goods, cash withdrawals, and transfers to other accounts (the expenses included $6,026 on Airbnb and $5,883 on an all-business class airline flying between New Jersey and Paris). According to the indictment, Thom spent $6,982 on a single purchase at the Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan.
According to the DOJ, of the money he did invest, Thom lost more than 73% in net loss between March 2024 and 2025. Thom allegedly falsified performance updates for clients showing gains.
In January 2025, he changed the Facebook group name to “AYABABTU” (an acronym for the meme “All Your Base Are Belong to Us,” which comes from a bad translation of a Japanese video game). Hundreds of members were removed from the group. Thom allegedly told some investors that someone else had taken over his Facebook account, and he then stopped responding to clients entirely.
Thom could not be immediately reached for comment prior to publication.
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