AUSTIN – Mowery Capital Management, a McKinney-based investment firm with ties to indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been fined $90,000 for violating state securities laws by providing false documents to Texas investigators and misleading clients about a past bankruptcy, state filings show.

The cease-and-desist order by Securities Commissioner John Morgan was issued late Friday, officials said.

The order requires Mowery Capital and its head, Frederick "Fritz" Mowery, to "immediately cease and desist from engaging in any fraudulent conduct enumerated herein in connection with rendering services as an investment adviser," according to the 24-page order that cited six specific violations of state securities law.

The charges paralleled ones recommended by two administrative law judges last August against the firm and Mowery, a longtime Paxton friend and business associate. But the order did not levy harsher punishments that could have included revocation of their state licenses or higher fines ordered for similar violations in other cases.

Paxton was indicted on three felony charges last summer stemming from when he was a state legislator, including soliciting at least two clients for Mowery Capital while failing to register with the state as an investment adviser representative. Paxton has denied the allegations.

Kevin Edmundson, an Austin attorney who represented Mowery in the case, did not return a phone call for comment on whether Mowery or his firm planned to appeal the decision.

Mowery could not be reached for comment. Neither could Morgan.

According to the order, Mowery violated securities laws by making misrepresentations in required disclosure documents and failing to properly disclose business ties to clients, among other actions.

Securities Board investigators had earlier alleged that Mowery backdated documents to try to show that his firm made required disclosures of a finder's fee arrangement, apparently involving Paxton.

One allegation was that Mowery provided false testimony by denying to board employees that he had lifted and put on his firm's website for eight years entire passages written by economist and television commentator Larry Kudlow, without crediting Kudlow.

Other allegations: That Mowery and his firm falsely represented in a client brochure that they had used a "discount broker," when they were using a more costly firm, and that Mowery had not been in bankruptcy proceedings, even though he had declared bankruptcy in 2005.

Noting that Mowery had no history of past violations, the order notes that at the time some violations occurred, Mowery himself "was a central figure in a harsh, negative, highly publicized political campaign; his son was on trial for intoxication manslaughter, of which he was later convicted; he was dealing with the care of his father and a disabled brother, and he was ill with what was eventually diagnosed as prostate cancer."

In April 2014, Paxton admitted to repeatedly soliciting clients for Mowery Capital without proper registration.

He was reprimanded by the securities board and fined $1,000, but did not face criminal charges until his indictment by a grand jury last year.