'Retire on Premiums: 8% a Month, Guaranteed'

• The seminar flyer (300 retail attendees): retail communication. Required: prior approval by a registered principal, and for options content the qualified options principal; a firm that intends to use it with retail investors must also handle any Rule 2210(c) filing obligation with FINRA's Advertising Regulation Department. Okafor's 'not advertising because I'm not mailing it' is simply wrong - distribution method does not control the category.
• The LinkedIn post: retail communication (public, product-focused). Same prior-approval requirement; personal pages are not exempt when used to promote the firm's business, and the firm's social media procedures govern.
• The 200-member Facebook group post: a group that large is not a private client list; treat it as a retail communication unless compliance confirms otherwise.
• Texts to 12 existing clients: correspondence. No pre-use principal approval is needed if the firm's procedures allow it, but it is subject to supervision and review, must be captured and retained, and must follow the same content standards. A text promising an 'income program' to 12 retail clients still has to be truthful and balanced.

Nearly every line is defective, and the defects are not typos:

• 'Guaranteed' and 'cannot lose money' misrepresent risk. Short-premium strategies have real loss exposure - assignment, gap moves, early exercise - and a guarantee statement is misleading on its face and may also implicate the prohibition on guaranteeing customers against loss.
• '8% a month' is a projection stated as fact. It must go; nothing in a personal account supports extrapolating a return rate.
• Personal-account results for 14 months are not representative, are unaudited, ignore the rep's different objectives and capital, and cannot be presented without context; past performance must always be accompanied by the statement that it does not guarantee future results.
• Missing risk disclosure is fatal for options content: no discussion of assignment, early exercise, total loss of premium, or the unlimited risk of uncovered positions, and no reference to the ODD.
• Salvage: a rewritten piece that describes the strategy plainly, states the actual risks, drops all guarantees and return projections, includes the required past-performance disclaimer, and refers readers to the ODD can be approved. As drafted, it cannot be approved for any audience, so no filing question arises.

• Reject clearly and in writing, with the specific standards cited, so the rejection is not later recast as an oversight. Make clear he may not distribute it Friday, in any format, including verbally walking a customer through it.
• Explain the content standards he will be held to going forward and offer a route to a compliant version with a realistic turnaround - next week, not never.
• Review what he has already sent. The 12 texts and any earlier drafts, posts, or seminar scripts need review for the same themes; a rep who writes 'guaranteed' once usually has said it before.
• Look for a compensation hook: is he soliciting clients for his own personal-account strategy, or steering them toward trades that generate his commissions? Either changes the risk assessment.
• Document and monitor. If the pattern continues, escalate for heightened supervision of his communications, and consider whether any prior use must be reported and remediated with affected clients.