The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against Fredrick D. Scott, the New York money manager who owns investment advisory firm ACI Capital Group. The regulator contends that he falsely claimed that the company’s assets under management were as high as $3.7 billion to give him greater credibility when…
Gary Mitchell Spitz, a broker and a registered principal of an Iowa-based brokerage firm, is suspended from associating with any FINRA member for a year and must pay a $5,000 fine. The SRO says that Spitz did not perform proper due diligence of an entity—a Reg D, Rule 506 private…
Texas Registered Rep Under Investigation for Financial Fraud Declined to Turn in Supplementary Documents Conrad Tambalo Bautista, a registered representative in Texas, is now barred from associating with any other Financial Industry Regulatory Authority member in any capacity. While not denying or admitting to the SRO’s findings, Bautista agreed to…
Foremost Trading LLC has settled the securities charges filed against it by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The regulator accused the introducing broker of failing to properly supervise the handling of specific trading accounts by employees, agents, and officers. To settle, Foremost Trading must pay a $400K civil penalty…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is fining VSR Financial Services Inc. $550,000 over claims that the firm did not set up, keep up, and enforce a supervisory system that was reasonable over its sale of non-conventional investments. The SRO says that the firm did not properly monitor concentrated client positions…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is fining Santander Investment Securities Inc. $350,000 over allegations that the brokerage firm failed to adequately supervise foreign fund offerings. The SRO says that the broker-dealer did not have a system in place to properly oversee communications between brokers, a registered firm principal, non-registered employees,…
It was nearly five years ago on September 15, 2008 when the public learned that Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt, resulting in billions of dollars of losses on a financial system already struggling with a housing market that was failing, as well as a growing credit crisis. Also, Merrill Lynch…
According to people who took a survey a report called the Financial Fraud and Fraud Susceptibility in the United States, while most people have been targeted by financial scammers, nearly half of them don’t see it coming. Almost 24,000 adults in the 40 and over age group participated. Among the…
Morgan Keegan & Co. has agreed to pay the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority $60,000 over allegations that its Small Business Administration Desk bought small business loans guaranteed by the gov’t from regional banks in this country and then pooled together the loans with qualities that were similar, securitizing them into…
NEXT Financial Group, Inc. will pay a $250,000 fine and perform an audit to identify all non-company email accounts that were used by the firm’s registered persons to conduct communications that were securities-related. It will also identify whether the accounts were captured by its servers, reviewed during regular email surveillance,…