Thompson, who left his post as chairman of Grubb & Ellislast year and has since founded Thompson National Properties LLC,tells GlobeSt.com that the investigation began when the SEC, in thecourse of routine compliance audits, found that Triple Net had notfiled some required documents on time for some of its funds or hadnot included all required information in those filings during theperiod 2002 to 2004. "They found just enough little things thatconcerned them that they went from a compliance audit to anenforcement investigation," Thompson explains.

Thompson says the $5 million in hard costs for Triple Netincluded more than $1 million for copying paper documents alone,plus millions more for attorneys' fees, accounting fees and otherexpenses. The inquiry also cost Triple Net in terms of time thatcompany employees spent gathering documents and performing othertasks associated with the investigation.

In addition to the direct costs, Thompson says, theinvestigation "did impede us in raising funds with some of ourbroker-dealers" because the TIC sponsor was a subject of an SECinvestigation. "We were very successful at Triple NetProperties...but we could have raised even more if thatinvestigation had not been hanging over our head," Thompsonsays.