[tptacek]

I understand. But if the offense is itself marginal, it doesn't make sense to inflict disproportionate punishment on one offender; the penalty still needs to bear some relationship to the offense! We don't, like, arrest Ferrari drivers for violating a no-turn-on-red sign so as to prevent other rich assholes from ignoring the sign. They get the same ticket everyone else does, and if they keep doing it, eventually we suspend their license.

[ryandrake]

A fine (or in this case settlement) has to be somewhat painful in order to deter. I remember a story about Steve Jobs never getting a license plate and always parking in spaces reserved for disabled people, and so on. He just ate the fines and continued the behavior because they were trivial to someone with his fortune.

If OP's numbers are correct, the fine in this case amounts to 0.015% of assets under management--far lower than what anyone would pay a money manager to manage their investments. I'm sure no other potential violator would feel it necessary to change their behavior if they knew their penalty was 0.015%.

[anigbrowl]

These guys (at Ensign Peak) kept doing it for ~20 years, and when they were worried about discovery by third parties their response was not to clean up their act but to iterate upon it.

I don't understand why you are equating a single enforcement action with a single offense. We don't just suspect they did it more often, we know. And they knew that it was wrong. Settling for future compliance as sufficient just incentivizes others to lie in the future.