Thompson, who left his post as chairman of Grubb & Ellis last year and has since founded Thompson National Properties LLC, tells GlobeSt.com that the investigation began when the SEC, in the course of routine compliance audits, found that Triple Net had not filed some required documents on time for some of its funds or had not included all required information in those filings during the period 2002 to 2004. "They found just enough little things that concerned them that they went from a compliance audit to an enforcement investigation," Thompson explains.

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

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