But a close examination of Mr. Goodman’s decades of work as a money guru reveals the many angles he worked. He made his living not just with books and speaking gigs, but as a paid ambassador for companies offering financial services.

The companies Mr. Goodman endorsed were a motley assortment, strange bedfellows for a man who made his bones at one of the country’s most respected financial publications. He had financial relationships with companies that promise to settle your debts for pennies on the dollar and allow you to borrow money using fine art and luxury handbags as collateral. And he dabbled in lending to borrowers via high-interest payday loans, then earned some more by channeling those who could be saved into nonprofit credit counseling.

These arrangements often made Mr. Goodman what is known as an affiliate, which enabled him to earn a commission for each new customer he helped those companies land. At other times, he took a flat fee to offer his endorsement.

Relationships like these are not illegal: Similar arrangements can be at play when people click a link that directs them to an item for sale on Amazon . And these deals are surprisingly common in the financial guru world.

But Mr. Goodman was particularly aggressive in pushing the companies that paid him and sometimes withheld crucial information from his followers when discussing the companies during his media appearances — conduct that, in the case of Woodbridge, particularly rankled the S.E.C.

A Personal Reckoning

When I heard about Mr. Goodman’s case, I took inventory of my memory. I had met him twice at conferences and appeared on his radio show in 2017 to promote a book I had written.

Nothing about him seemed out of sorts. Like most of us in the small world of personal finance, he seemed to be trying to help people and hustling hard to figure out a way to make a living at it.