A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Panel has ruled that UBS must pay claimant Antonio Gnocchi Franco $204,000 in compensatory damages and $66,000 in costs for his Puerto Rico bond fraud case. Franco, a Puerto Rico resident who was also the trustee of his law firm’s pension plan, accused the brokerage…
Investor Lawyers Blog
Judge Says Ex-F-Squared CEO Must Pay More Than $13M Related to AlphaSector Strategy and ETF Fraud
Howard Present, the ex-CEO and cofounder of F-Squared Investments, must pay more than $13M—nearly $11M of disgorgement, almost $1.4M of interest and a nearly $1.6M penalty. The final judgement, issued by U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston, comes after a federal jury found Present liable for the false and…
Goldman Sachs Gives LPL Financial Holdings Clients Access to Securities Lending
LPL Financial Holdings (LPLA) brokers and investment advisers will now be able to offer their clients securities lending services through Goldman Sachs (GS). Under the new arrangement, LPL clients can borrow anywhere from $75,000 to $25 million against the securities held in their accounts. In a press release, Goldman Sachs…
SEC Grants $83M in Whistleblower Awards in $415M Bank of America Settlement
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has awarded two whistleblowers almost $50M and another over $33M in the largest whistleblower awards that the regulator has issued to date. This ups the total of SEC whistleblower awards granted to $262M to 53 individuals in the last six years. According to the…
Stock Fraud: Fyre Festival Founder to Pay $26M After Guilty Plea, Promoter is Accused of Defrauding Gold Mining Stock Investors, and SEC Prevents Alleged Pump-And-Dump Scam
Fyre Festival Founder Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Must Pay Back Investors Billy McFarland, the founder of the failed Fyre Festival who pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, must may pay back millions of dollars to investors whom he bilked. In Manhattan federal court, McFarland acknowledged that…
Theranos and Founder Elizabeth Holmes Charged in Alleged $750M Fraud
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed fraud charges against Theranos Inc., its CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes, and its ex-President Ramesh Balwani. The regulator contends that they engaged in a years-long fraud that raised over $700M from investors. According to the SEC’s complaint, the three of them made…
Strategic Return Notes
The attorneys at Shepherd Smith Edward & Kantas are investigating the claims of investors who purchased Strategic Return Notes (“SRNs”). Bank of America and Merrill Lynch created Strategic Return Notes, which are an unsecured promissory note issued by Bank of America. Bank of America has no obligation to and will not make…
Massachusetts Investigates Wells Fargo Advisers
The US state of Massachusetts is investigating Wells Fargo Advisors (WFC) over whether the firm engaged in unsuitable recommendations, inappropriate referrals, and other actions related to its sales of certain investment products to customers. The news of the probe comes after Wells Fargo disclosed that it was evaluating whether inappropriate…
Investigation Underway of Asset Management Fund’s (“AMF”) Ultra Short Fund (AULTX) and the Role of Shay Asset Management
When investors placed funds in The Ultra Short Fund (Nasdaq: AULTX), managed by The Asset Management Fund (“AMF”), they believed their funds were safely on the sidelines in a money market alternative. Later surprised by substantial losses in this fund, many now seek legal representation. On its website, AMF describes…
Ex-Equifax Trader is Accused of Insider Trading Before Data Breach News Was Disclosed to the Public
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed insider trading charges against Jun Ying, the ex-chief information officer of an Equifax US business unit. The regulator contends that Ying engaged in insider trading in 2007 before the consumer credit reporting agency announced that there had been a major data breach…