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2008–2011: Zealous Capital Markets and Personal Bankruptcy

By 2008, Ault was running his own broker-dealer, Zealous Capital Markets, LLC, out of Tustin, California. According to FINRA's later disciplinary findings, this is the period in which the unauthorized-trading conduct at the heart of his 2012 suspension occurred — 43 trades across four customer accounts, executed without the clients' prior authorization, knowledge, or consent.

Zealous Holdings, the parent, did not survive. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Ault personally filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, which was later converted to Chapter 7 — a fact subsequently disclosed in SEC filings of the public companies he would go on to lead.

2012: FINRA Suspension and Restitution

In May 2012, FINRA — without Ault admitting or denying the findings — suspended him from association with any FINRA member firm for two years, fined him $75,000, and ordered him to pay $312,916.06 plus interest in restitution to the four customers whose accounts he had traded in without authorization. The full disciplinary action remains visible today on FINRA's BrokerCheck record for CRD #2157788.

For most professionals, a two-year industry bar tied to unauthorized customer trading would mark the end of a public-markets career. For Ault, it was an intermission.

2016–2017: The Pivot Into Public-Company Stewardship — Digital Power Corp

In September 2016, Ault acquired a controlling interest in a small Nasdaq-listed company called Digital Power Corp., later restructured as DPW Holdings, Inc. From this base, he assembled a sprawl of subsidiaries spanning power-electronics, defense, lending, real estate, hospitality, and — eventually — Bitcoin mining and AI data centers.

The market reaction over the following two to three years was unkind. A widely circulated 2019 Seeking Alpha article carried the title "DPW Holdings: A Death Spiral Masquerading As A Bitcoin Stock," capturing what retail investors were saying out loud on Yahoo Finance, InvestorsHub, and StockTwits: that the company's lifeblood appeared to be the issuance of new shares at deeply discounted prices to convertible-note holders, who would then sell those shares into the open market, pressuring the price down and forcing more issuance. Critics called this "toxic financing." Ault, his executives, and their lenders disputed the characterization.

2018–2020: Derivative Lawsuit and Settlement

The pressure crystallized into formal litigation. On July 31, 2018, a consolidated shareholder derivative action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Case No. 2:18‑cv‑06578) against DPW Holdings as nominal defendant and against its directors and officers. The complaint alleged breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.

The case settled on terms set out in a Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement dated February 24, 2020. The court found the agreement "fundamentally fair, adequate, and reasonable" and DPW agreed to adopt a package of corporate-governance reforms. As is typical of derivative settlements, no individual director admitted wrongdoing. Plaintiffs' counsel collected fees; the company received governance commitments; the underlying shareholder dilution complaints continued unabated.

In a separate matter from the same period, plaintiffs Ding Gu and Xiaodan Wang filed a complaint in early 2020 against Ault personally and DPW Holdings, alleging losses tied to the company's securities — one of several individual-investor suits that surfaced during this stretch.