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WASHINGTON — ETrade Securities, one of the largest online brokerage firms, has been fined $90,000 by a self-policing brokers’ group for allegedly violating advertising rules by making misleading claims. 

ETrade neither admitted to nor denied the allegations by NASD Regulation in a settlement announced Monday. NASD Regulation, the disciplinary arm of the National Association of Securities Dealers, said ETrade violated the group’s advertising rules in an August 1999 newspaper ad for its technology index mutual fund and in two direct-mail marketing campaigns in 1999 and 2000. 

The direct-mail ads were sent to 9.8 million prospective investors, NASD Regulation said in a news release. 

The group’s rules prohibit advertising that makes exaggerated claims for returns on investment, or is misleading or deceptive. 

NASD Regulation, which also censured ETrade, also alleged that the company violated supervision rules by failing to require its compliance officials to obtain a final version of advertising material for review. 

But there was no determination made that ETrade intentionally violated any rules or regulations, said John Metaxas, spokesman for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company. 

“There has not been any finding that anyone was harmed by the advertisements or that anybody relied on the advertisements to their detriment,” he added. 

Regulators have been giving some types of financial advertising increased scrutiny since the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt, publicly criticized online brokerage advertising in 1999. He likened some of the ads to commercials for the lottery, luring investors with the implied promise of quick riches and no mention of risk. 

During the heyday of online trading before the market’s tumble last year, ads for online brokerage firms seemed to be everywhere: on prime time, wrapped around big sports events, including the Super Bowl, and in newspapers. Some of the ads were aggressive, edgy or humorous. 

NASD Regulation has reviewed ads and even had some of them killed, both by online and traditional brokerages. 

The brokers’ group has been investigating the advertising practices of ETrade for some time. The company disclosed last August that both NASD Regulation and the SEC were examining the practices. 

The SEC dropped its case after it found that ETrade’s advertising hadn’t violated anti-fraud rules, The Wall Street Journal reported last month, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the investigation. 

In the NASD Regulation case, the group said: 

—In the newspaper ad in August 1999 introducing its technology index mutual fund, ETrade said the fund’s objective was to match, before fees and expenses, the total return of the stocks making up the Goldman Sachs Technology Index. The ad also said the new mutual fund was ranked by mutual fund analyst Morningstar as the lowest-cost tech-index fund, but in fact Morningstar had not ranked the ETrade fund. 

The ad also referred to the 62.4 percent return rate of the Goldman Sachs fund, but failed to disclose that the ETrade fund was a new one with no performance history and to clearly distinguish between the two. 

—ETrade’s “Check Coupon Direct Mailers,” sent to 6.6 million prospective investors between July 1999 and April 2000, had a check-style coupon made out to the recipient offering a $75 bonus to people who opened a brokerage account with ETrade. The bonus would be credited to the account immediately, the mailers said, but in fact it could actually take several weeks. 

The mailers also inaccurately portrayed the $75 as a guaranteed return on investment rather than a bonus for opening an account. 

—The company’s “Prequalified for Margin Direct Mailers,” sent to 3.2 million investors between October 1999 and April 2000, said the recipient had been selected to receive a margin account based on his or her credit history. In fact, ETrade’s approval for margin accounts did not include a review of credit history. 

Investors buy stocks on margin by borrowing part of the purchase price from their brokerage firm and putting up the securities as collateral for the loan. 

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On the Net: 

NASD Regulation: http://www.nasdr.com 

ETrade: http://www.etrade.com 

Securities and Exchange Commission: http://www.sec.gov