Suspended Broker Gets 2 Years For Scamming Social Media Followers

A former New York-area broker who reinvented himself as a social media figure called “K Money” was sentenced to two years in prison for scamming social media followers from whom he’d raised $800,000. He was accused of putting only a fraction of the amount to use while he feathered a lavish lifestyle. Kenneth Thom, 42, who was known by online handles such as “K Money” and “K$,” held himself out as a “beacon of knowledge” to a community of social media users, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He built a following on Facebook, Twitch and Instagram, selling trading lessons and investment advice. Thom, a resident of Belleville, N.J., lived in New York at the time of the fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the charges. He pled guilty to the fraud in March. In a parallel action, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against Thom in August 2025. He wooed Facebook followers into giving him money to invest, telling them he was putting it to work in defined trading strategies, but instead put most of the funding toward personal expenses like the purchase of luxury goods, travel and dining while otherwise chasing unsuccessful trading strategies, according to prosecutors. In early 2024, the government said, Thom told his Facebook followers how to forward him funds for three “shared accounts” that went under names such as “Swing Trade,” “Day and Swing Trade” and “YOLO” (for “you only live once,) in which he said he would trade options or futures or a combination of the two. “Thom eventually raised nearly $800,000 from approximately 66 clients,” the Department of Justice said in a press release today. “Of this sum, [he] invested only approximately $350,000, diverting most of the remainder for his own personal use. … Of the $350,000 that Thom invested, he lost approximately 73% between approximately March 2024 and March 2025.” Despite the losses, the government said, Thom published bogus charts showing successful gains in the shared accounts. He eventually shut down the group when investors sought withdrawals and claimed that his account had been hacked, according to a sentencing request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In the sentencing letter, which requested 36 months of prison time for Thom, the assistant U.S. attorney said he “terminated the scheme only because his investors were demanding their money back, and the handful he refunded he charged 20%.” The letter also mentioned that at the time of his sentencing he still held on to a Maserati and two Porsches. Thom hasn’t been registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority since 2011, when Finra suspended him for failing to pay an arbitration award. The Department of Justice said that while he was working as a registered broker in 2010, Thom commingled $60,000 in investor money with his ow funds in a brokerage account he controlled. “In a striking preview of his offense conduct here,” said the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing letter, “Thom lost most of his clients’ money through unsuccessful trading and used the rest to pay for his personal expenses, including a security deposit on a Manhattan apartment. When one of his investors sought to withdraw funds, Thom invented fake excuses and then ignored the investor altogether.” His last firm as a registered broker was Next Financial Group. After his suspension by Finra, prosecutors said, Thom went on to reinvent himself online as a financial “luminary.”