Upon reading the OP, my first thought was: "A 5.75 front-load fee%!? That should be criminal!"
Then I was reminded of two of my favourite Supreme Court of Canada cases, and thought "maybe this front-load fee actually would be criminal in Canada" ;-). Both cases are from the same piece of litigation involving one Mr. Garland.
Between 1983 and 1995, Gordon Garland was a customer of The Consumers’ Gas Company Limited, an Ontario gas utility company. On several occasions, Mr. Garland failed to pay his utility bill on time and was charged a late fee. In total, between 1983 and 1995, he was charged a grand total of $75 in late fees.
Unimpressed with these late fees, Mr. Garland did what any reasonable person would do and commenced a lawsuit rooted in a theory of unjust enrichment, arguing that the late fee amounted to a criminal rate of interest contrary to s 347 of the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, which statute makes it a criminal offense to charge or collect a rate of interest above 60%.
The theory of the case was that since the collection of the late fees was criminal, equity demanded that the gas company not be permitted to retain the proceeds of its crime, and that the late fees must be repaid in restitution.
The gas company filed a motion for summary judgment on the alternative grounds that (1) they had no loan contract with Mr. Garland and the late fee was not interest, (2) the late fee was authorised by an order of the Ontario energy regulator and could not be criminal, (3) even if the late fee was criminal, the regulatory order should constitute a complete defence against a claim of unjust enrichment, and (4) the gas company was not actually enriched by the late fees because if they had not been able to charge them, they would have just raised gas prices across the board, and since there was no enrichment, the claim of unjust enrichment must fail. Mr. Garland also brought a cross-motion for summary judgment, in which he argued that the gas company had no defence and the Court should rule in his favour on the paper record.
The trial judge accepted argument (1) and found that there was no loan involved here and Mr. Garland was basically very confused to invoke his theory of a criminal rate of interest. The Ontario courts upheld that ruling.
On appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada (Garland v. Consumers' Gas Co., [1998] 3 SCR 112), the Court reversed the decision of the trial judge and held that (1) "credit" for the purpose of the Criminal Code includes a service rendered for payment, and (2) "interest" includes pretty much any kind of consideration above the cost of the service, regardless of how it is described. Based on those findings, the Court found that the $75 in late fees, when calculated as an annualised ratio of the gas prices, exceeded a 60% rate, and was therefore criminal. The Court then remanded the case to the trial judge to consider the remaining arguments on the cross-motions for summary judgment.
You can probably see the point of this protracted narrative now. If a late fee could constitute a criminal interest charge, why not a front-load fee? The provision of a mutual fund investing service could be a "service ... actually advanced or to be advanced under an agreement or arrangement" within the meaning of the statute and the Court's interpretation thereof. If the mutual fund is held for a sufficiently short period, a 5.75% front-load fee could be an arbitrarily large annualised rate, significantly above 60%. For example, if the fund is held for a month, the annualised rate would be at least 69%.
As for Mr. Garland, on remand, the trial judge accepted all of the gas company's alternative arguments and dismissed the case again. The Ontario courts again upheld the ruling. No doubt recognising the importance of these $75 in late fees, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another appeal from Mr. Garland, and in a second ruling (Garland v. Consumers' Gas Co., [2004] 1 SCR 629), the Court essentially accepted all of his arguments, finding that (1) the Ontario energy regulator did not have the jurisdiction to make orders authorising criminal activity, so the order purportedly authorising the late fee was void from the start, (2) the gas company could not rely on the order to shield itself from liability because the gas company was on notice about the possible illegality of the order because Mr. Garland had complained about it, and (3) even though the company might not technically have been enriched, restitution should be ordered anyway as a matter of public policy because "a criminal should not be permitted to keep the proceeds of his crime" (para 57).
In conclusion, the Court ruled that Mr. Garland's cross motion for summary judgment should succeed because the gas company had no defence in law, and the gas company was ordered to repay the criminal late fees.
I think this piece of litigation was just totally badass. Mr. Garland actually convinced the Supreme Court to hear two separate appeals from him based on arguments that had little to no support in the existing case law, and weren't exactly the most sympathetic arguments to start with, and which all the lower courts had found to be totally without merit. And then he won both appeals!
Of course, I have no idea what your state's laws say about criminal rates of interest. But maybe there's an argument in there. The analogy is somewhat flawed since part of the Court's reasoning was that customers had the ability to "defer payment" of the gas bill (i.e. by just not paying), which is how they found there was credit advanced. The mutual fund analogy doesn't quite work that way, but depending on the exact language of the local criminal rate of interest statute, there could be something to work with.
Ever since the ruling in Canada, people have been dreaming up a lot of arguments based on criminal rates of interest, such as to challenge bank foreign exchange fees. I don't know of any other cases that have reached the Supreme Court though.
[Note that I have summarised the Garland litigation in very broad strokes only. There are many nuances contained within the actual opinions.]
