Last November, I wrote about one of the pitfalls of HR finally getting that long sought-after seat at the table—high-level jobs carry a number of high-level risks.

Here’s proof positive: One of the two HR leaders I wrote back about then has agreed to settle the case brought against her by the SEC.

Nancy Tullos, the former vice president for human resources at Irvine, California-based Broadcom Corp., has “agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that she personally benefited by changing the value of employee stock options, the first settlement of a civil case into stock option backdating involving the Irvine chipmaker,” according to a report in The Orange County Register.

As a result of the stock option scheme that Tullos took part in, “Broadcom restated its financial results in January 2007 and reported an additional $2.22 billion in compensation expenses — the largest restatement to date arising from stock option backdating,” according to the SEC. The SEC said that Tullos agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying the allegations of the complaint. The settlement still must be approved by a judge.

This is serious business and a serious penalty for any corporate executive, much less the company’s HR chief. “Tullos pleaded guilty to a federal criminal count of obstruction of justice in November,” the Register noted. “In that case, Tullos admitted that she altered evidence of a new employee’s hire date at the request of members of the company’s compensation committee. … She agreed to pay $100,000 in fines and to pay the SEC $1.2 million in personal benefits she allegedly received for manipulating the stock options, although she never actually cashed in those options.”

I’ll repeat here what I said in November: The power that comes with having a seat at the table carries with it some heavyweight ethical and legal responsibilities. And since the HR chief is frequently the person in a company who is called upon to weigh the ethical and legal implications of people practices, a company’s top HR leader must be like Caesar’s wife—above suspicion and beyond reproach.

I don’t know Nancy Tullos, but I’ll bet she deeply regrets what she got drawn into. She got hit with a stiff penalty, and it is a sobering lesson that all HR executives would do well to learn from.