OPINION AND ORDER Plaintiff Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) brought this civil enforcement action against Defendants Adam Mattessich and Joseph Ludovico, two securities brokers formerly employed by Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. (“Cantor”).1 Plaintiff alleges that Mattessich and Ludovico schemed to circumvent Cantor’s established procedures for paying and recording commission payments to its brokers for the time period between January and December 2013 (the “Relevant Period”). Plaintiff contends that, in so doing, Defendants aided and abetted Cantor’s violations of Rule 17a-3(a)(19), 17 C.F.R. §240.17a-3(a)(19), which was promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”), Pub. L. 73-291, 48 Stat. 881, and which requires registered broker-dealers to make and keep accurate records of each securities transaction attributable, for compensation purposes, to each broker. By Order dated September 9, 2019 (Dkt. #41), the Court denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss, and on December 18, 2019, the Court entered a final judgment as to Defendant Ludovico on consent (Dkt. #58). Plaintiff now moves for summary judgment as to liability against Defendant Mattessich, the only remaining Defendant in this case. Plaintiff also moves to strike portions of an affidavit Defendant submitted in opposition to the instant motion for summary judgment. For the reasons set forth in the remainder of this Opinion, the Court denies Plaintiff’s motion to strike, and grants in part and denies in part Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. BACKGROUND2 A. Factual Background The Court has previously expounded on the history of this case in the course of resolving Defendants’ motion to dismiss. Sec. & Exch. Comm’n v. Mattessich, 407 F. Supp. 3d 264, 266-68 (S.D.N.Y. 2019) (“Mattessich I”). It therefore mentions here only what is relevant to the instant motion. 1. Cantor’s Policies and Procedures Concerning the Payment and Recording of Commission Compensation Cantor has been a registered broker-dealer with the SEC since December 1947. (Pl. 56.1 2). From at least 2001 to the present, Cantor has used a system of account executive (or “AE”) codes linked to customer accounts to apportion and track commission compensation for its brokers for securities transactions related to those accounts. (Id. at
13, 15). Cantor assigns an individual AE code to each employee with responsibility for sales and trading, and each brokerage transaction is associated with an AE code that dictates which Cantor employee or employees will receive the commission generated by the associated transaction. (Id. at