On May 4, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in connection with the Commission’s civil enforcement action against Neil R. Cole.

In December 2019, the SEC charged brand-management company Iconix Brand Group, Inc. and three of its former top executives with fraud. Iconix and two of its former executives have agreed to settle. The SEC’s litigation proceeded against Iconix’s former CEO.

The SEC’s complaint against former Iconix CEO Neil Cole and former Chief Operating Officer Seth Horowitz alleged that Cole and Horowitz devised a fraudulent scheme to create fictitious revenue, allowing Iconix to meet or beat Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimates in the second and third quarters of 2014. According to the complaint, Cole and Horowitz realized substantial profits on Iconix stock sales as a result of the alleged fraud. In order to hide the fraud, as alleged, Cole and Horowitz also deleted emails and caused Iconix to make false and misleading statements in response to an SEC inquiry.

The SEC separately charged Iconix with fraud for recognizing false revenue and manipulating its reported earnings in 2014, entering into transactions to conceal distressed finances at two licensees who could not meet licensing royalty payments owed to Iconix, and failing to recognize over $239 million in impairment charges for three brands over a multi-year period.

Additionally, Iconix and its former Chief Financial Officer Warren Clamen failed to recognize losses from Iconix’s failing licensees, disclose that Iconix entered into transactions to secretly and temporarily bolster its licensees’ finances, and properly test for impairment. As a result of these accounting improprieties, Iconix overstated net income by hundreds of millions of dollars between 2013 and the third quarter of 2015.

As stated in the notice of dismissal, “The Commission’s decision to seek dismissal of this enforcement action is an exercise of its discretion and does not necessarily reflect the Commission’s position on any other case.”