Just a few weeks after former Wells Fargo (WFC) broker John Gregory Schmidt consented to a final judgment in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) investor fraud case against him, the regulator announced that it has barred Schmidt for misappropriating more than $1.3M from clients, most of them elderly…
Brokerage firm and investment adviser BB&T Securities has agreed to give back over $5M to retail investors, as well as pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a $500K penalty, to resolve charges that Valley Forge Asset Management misled advisory clients into thinking they were getting complete “full-service brokerage…
In an Investor Alert, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) sought to inform investors about the risks involved in securities-backed lines of credit (SBLOCs). These loans are usually touted as a hassle-free, low-cost way for investors to…
According to public filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, there were approximately eighty broker-dealers across the country who sold, or were at least authorized to sell, these investments for GPB, including Aegis Capital Corp., D.H. Hill Securities, Purshe Kaplan Sterling Investments, Sagepoint Financial, Inc., Woodbury Financial Services, Inc.,…
InvestmentNews reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating GPB Capital Holdings. The alternative investment management firm said that the FBI stopped by unannounced to its New York offices last week. The visit took place a few months after both the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the…
According to The Wall Street Journal, three hedge funds that own Puerto Rico general obligation (GO) bonds have set up their own committee in an effort to get paid back the money they are owed. Court records indicate that GoldenTree Asset Management, Monarch Alternative Capital, and Whitebox Advisers, which collectively…
Jury Convicts Investment Manager for Defrauding Lenders and Clients A federal jury has convicted Shawn Baldwin, a Chicago investment manager, on seven counts of wire fraud. Baldwin is accused of fraudulently obtaining over $10M from at least 15 investors and lenders between 2006 and 2017. They thought that their money…
Although many of the thousands of cases investors in Puerto Rico bonds and closed-end funds have brought over the last five years have focused on UBS Financial Services Incorporated of Puerto Rico (“UBS-PR”), other brokerage firms in the Commonwealth engaged in the same wrongful sales practices. One such firm that…
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed fraud charges against Castleberry Financial Services, its president T. Jonathon Turner, and CEO Norman M. Strell accusing them of running an investment fund scam that defrauded at least investors of $3.6M in the last year and continues to solicit new investors.…
The City of Birmingham Retirement and Relief System and the Electrical Workers Pension System Local 103 have filed a proposed class action securities fraud lawsuit accusing a number of big banks of colluding with one another to rig the prices of Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac) and Federal…