The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's National Adjudicatory Council has upheld a bar handed down by FINRA to a former broker who allegedly cheated during a Series 24 exam by writing exam information on his driver's license, fingers and forearm and taking a long unauthorized break in the middle of the exam.
The Series 24 exam — also known as the General Securities Principal Qualification Exam (or GP) — tests the "competency of an entry-level principal to perform their job as a principal dependent on their corequisite registration," according to FINRA.
Thomas John Lykos Jr. served as a broker and chief compliance officer for the Houston-based FINRA member firm Sanders Morris Harris from 2018 to 2019, according to his report on FINRA's BrokerCheck website.
In a May 1, 2020 complaint, the broker-dealer self-regulator's Department of Enforcement alleged that, while taking the General Securities Principal Qualification Exam at a testing center on July 20, 2018, Lykos was "captured on video reviewing notes he had written in between his fingers."
The FINRA Hearing Panel found that Lykos received outside assistance during the exam and violated its rules of conduct by taking an unscheduled and unauthorized break outside the test center premises, writing exam-related details on his driver's license, fingers and forearm, and by leaving the test center with writing on his fingers and forearm.
The Hearing Panel barred Lykos for those violations, and he appealed the decision.
