FINRA bars Houston advisor Robert Wayne Thompson over withheld documents in $2.3 million client suit

James Shelton received roughly $7 million in damages after a 2012 workplace injury involving an overturned truck left him with a brain injury and cognitive impairment, conditions a Dallas County lawsuit says made him vulnerable to exploitation. The suit, filed in October, accuses Houston advisor Robert Wayne Thompson of taking more than $2.3 million from Shelton between 2023 and 2025, funds the complaint says were put toward home improvements, furniture, household and personal purchases, and a healthcare startup.

FINRA has barred Thompson, Financial Advisor Magazine first reported, and the bar rests on his refusal to provide documents to investigators, leaving the question of the client funds to the civil case. The regulator wanted records for both the client-funds inquiry and a broader look at Thompson's outside business activities, which included the startup; when Thompson declined, it closed the inquiry with a bar for non-cooperation. The $2.3 million remains a claim, not a finding, and the civil case runs on its own schedule.

O.N. Equity Sales Company fired Thompson in October 2025, citing the client's lawsuit and the fact that he had acted as Shelton's durable power of attorney without the firm's consent. Its termination filing added that his shell companies had never been disclosed to the broker-dealer, a lapse that reached the firm before the regulator's letter did.

The suit reaches past Thompson to name his firm, First Texas Alliance Corp., alongside the broker-dealer O.N. Equity Sales Company, O.N. Management, and Thompson's wife, daughter, and son-in-law, all of whom Shelton says benefited from the funds. It also names PrimeMed, a healthcare marketing company Thompson launched that filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy earlier this year and had developed intellectual property called the “Sentinel Medical Solution Project,” aimed at streamlining healthcare benefits for employers.

Shelton's account of the money is transactional: he claims Thompson and others set up shell companies to make his funds look like investments. One of those companies' bank accounts, the suit says, shows non-investment “family consumption and luxury spending,” including hair salon services, luxury dining, groceries, auto repair, pharmacies, dermatology, hotels and vacations.

Dallas County will now sort out where the money went and which named defendants touched it, with PrimeMed's Chapter 13 case filed earlier this year running alongside.