An investment adviser with offices in Rhode Island and New York created a bogus billion-dollar client to inflate her firm’s assets under management while trying to lure investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a suit.

Locke Capital Management owner Leila Jenkins, 54, repeatedly lied in marketing materials and regulatory filings since 2003, eventually attracting two overseas banks as clients in 2007, the SEC said in a complaint at federal court in Rhode Island yesterday.

“This brazen web of lies to investors constituted a serious breach of fiduciary duty,” said David Bergers, of the SEC.