The SEC suspended a brokerage official.

Robert Check, the former head of the mutual funds department at Advest Inc., a Hartford, Conn.-based brokerage firm, was ordered suspended for 30 days after the firm was censured for overcharging mutual funds customers on sales commissions. Advest did not admit or deny that it failed to ensure that many of its mutual funds customers received volume discounts on sales commissions, but voluntarily changed its procedure to eliminate the overcharges and refunded $627,000 to its customers.