Corporate Greed Case Study: Open to the Public Investing and Its Impact on Everyday Investors
Lured by a Promise of “Free” Trading
Imagine you’re scrolling through social media, trying to get ahead financially. You follow creators you trust, people who seem to understand the complex world of investing. They tell you about a platform, Open to the Public Investing, where trading is “commission-free.” It sounds empowering—a way to finally access a market that has long felt exclusive.
Armed with a special link from your favorite influencer, you sign up, joining over 23,000 others who did the same. What you don’t know is that the promise of “free” isn’t the whole story, and the system designed to protect you has already failed.
You have become a target in a corporate playbook that prioritizes growth over transparency, leaving you to navigate the hidden risks alone.
The Corporate Playbook: How the Harm Was Done
From January 2020 to at least September 2022, Open to the Public Investing (Public Investing) executed a calculated marketing strategy. The company paid 110 social media influencers to act as its sales force. It wasn’t a passive relationship; the firm actively cultivated these partnerships. Influencers were given a “Content Creator Kit” with examples of “great” content and a list of “key talking points.” This script encouraged them to heavily promote two key features: “$0 commission fees on standard trades” and the ability to trade fractional shares.
By “entangling” itself in the content creation process, Public Investing turned influencers’ social media feeds into a vast, unregulated advertising network.
The company incentivized production, paying some influencers for each post and others for every new customer who signed up and funded an account using their unique referral link.
There was no limit to how much an influencer could earn, creating a powerful motive to generate hype. However, the company failed to build a system to supervise this network.
For over three years, it did not review and approve all influencer posts, nor did it keep proper records of these communications, effectively turning a blind eye to the messages being disseminated on its behalf.
A Cascade of Consequences: The Real-World Impact
The fallout from this strategy was a stream of misinformation that directly harmed the very retail investors the company claimed to serve. The corporate directive to push “commission-free” trading had a predictable and damaging consequence.
Economic Misinformation
Influencers repeatedly posted that the firm offered “commission-free trades” without disclosing that other fees could apply. This omission created a misleading impression of the service’s actual cost, luring in customers under a false pretense. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, where the attractive headline conceals the less appealing reality found in the fine print—or in this case, a fee schedule that was never linked.
Furthermore, while influencers promoted the novel ability to buy fractional shares, they conveniently left out the significant limitations.
They failed to disclose that these fractional shares might not be transferable to another brokerage. This crucial detail meant that investors who thought they were building a portable portfolio were actually locked into Public Investing’s platform, a fact they would only discover when they tried to leave. The communications were, in effect, building a walled garden while advertising an open field.
Finally, many of these posts failed to clearly identify themselves for what they were: paid advertisements. This blurred the line between authentic recommendation and paid endorsement, exploiting the trust influencers had built with their followers.
A System Designed for This: Profit, Deregulation, and Power
This whole kerfuffle is the direct consequence of our profit maximizing financial system that prioritizes innovation and growth at the expense of consumer protection.
The rise of fintech apps like Public Investing has occurred in a regulatory environment that has struggled to keep pace with new marketing channels like social media. The relentless pursuit of new customers—fueled by venture capital and market pressure—creates a powerful incentive to cut corners.
In this neoliberal landscape, supervision is often framed as a barrier to progress rather than a necessary safeguard. Public Investing’s failure to establish a reasonable supervisory system for its influencer program was not just an oversight; it was a choice.
For over three years, the company operated without the basic guardrails required to ensure its public communications were fair and balanced. This is a feature, not a bug, of a system that encourages firms to move fast and break things, even if those “things” are the financial well-being and informed consent of their customers. The rules exist, but the corporate will to follow them clashes with the demand for relentless growth.
Dodging Accountability: How the Powerful Evade Justice
After years of violations, Public Investing was censured and fined $350,000. The company must also have a senior manager certify that it has fixed the identified problems. However, this outcome is a troubling reflection of how accountability works for the powerful.
Crucially, the settlement was reached without the company admitting to or denying the findings. This allows Public Investing to sidestep any admission of guilt, insulating it from further liability and preserving its public image.
The $350,000 fine, while seemingly substantial, must be viewed in the context of a company that acquired over 23,000 customers through the very practices being punished. For a growing fintech firm, such a penalty is easily absorbed as a “cost of doing business”—a rounding error in the marketing budget rather than a genuine deterrent.
No individuals were held publicly accountable, allowing the corporate entity to absorb the blow while the decision-makers remain shielded.
Reclaiming Power: Pathways to Real Change
This case makes clear that meaningful reform is necessary to protect the public from predatory financial marketing. True change requires moving beyond reactive, after-the-fact fines and implementing systemic protections.
Regulators must establish explicit and stringent rules for financial advertising on social media, with severe penalties for platforms and firms that fail to enforce them. The responsibility for disclosure cannot fall on the consumer; it must be mandated for the corporation.
Furthermore, corporate governance needs fundamental reform. Accountability must be personal. Fines should be accompanied by sanctions against the executives who oversee and approve these deceptive strategies. Until individual decision-makers face professional consequences, these penalties will remain a manageable business expense.
Conclusion: A Story of a System, Not an Exception
The story of Open to the Public Investing is a tale of our a late-stage capitalistic system where financial services, social media, and the relentless pursuit of profit converge to create predictable victims.
The influencers were just the messengers in this scam the message itself was crafted by a corporate strategy that prized customer acquisition above all else. This legal document reveals a truth that goes far beyond one company: in our modern economy, the tools of connection are too often refashioned into instruments of deception, and the cost is always paid by the public.
All factual claims in this article were derived from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent No. 2021072581501.
I used this link to download the above PDF file from the FINRA website: https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/fda_documents/2021072581501%20Open%20to%20the%20Public%20Investing%2C%20Inc.%20CRD%20127818%20AWC%20lp%20%282025-1750983601171%29.pdf
According to FINRA, the address for this company is 6 Harrison St in New York City: https://brokercheck.finra.org/firm/summary/127818 that is the building that I used for this article just in case anybody was wondering.
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