Nine years after the death of aviation pioneer and philanthropist George Batchelor, a circuit court verdict has issued a jury awarding his estate and foundation $91 million in its financial fraud case against BDO Seidman. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2002, accused BDO Seidman of covering up inaccurate financial…
Earlier this month, the members of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management recommended that Congress either set up at least one self-regulatory organization that oversees investment advisers, impose “user fees” to fund examinations by the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, or make investment adviser oversight the…
Even though former Oppenheimer manager James F. Dever won a $74,000 award over his dismissal at the brokerage firm in private arbitration, he has pushed to have the records from the case made public. Dever contends that he was fired because he cooperated with the state in its probe of…
Many financial firms settled claims filed by those defrauded in the Enron debacle. Meanwhile, many more Enron securities fraud cases have been dismissed by a court system riddled with special interest influence. No financial firm has been held liable and certain individuals at those firms were held liable only to…
The Us Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted a “say-on-pay” rules that will allow the shareholders of publicly listed companies to weigh in on executive compensation via advisory votes. The new rules, which implements a Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, gives shareholders more input regarding executive compensation.…
Registered investment adviser Alexei Koval has pleaded guilty to three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud over his role in a $1 million insider trading scheme. Koval, a registered investment adviser, allegedly acted on tips about provided by his friend Igor Poteroba, an…
An article published this week in Slate talks about how despite what many might think, brokers in fact do not owe clients a fiduciary duty to give them the best advice possible. This could very well explain why some brokers don’t believe they are really crossing the line-or, at the…
Under Rule 15Fi-1, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule under the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, certain security-based swap participants and security-based swap dealers would provide counterparties with an electronic “trade acknowledgement” to acknowledge and verify specific security-based swap transactions. The SEC’s proposal comes under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform…
While the multi-billion dollar Stanford and Madoff Ponzi scams are among the larger fraud schemes that have dominated the news headlines, “smaller” Ponzi scams resulting in losses in the millions have cropped up throughout the US. Some of these fraudsters have been convicted and are paying for their crimes behind…
Nearly Half of Those Committed Of Insider Trading Crimes Avoid Prison According to Bloomberg News, nearly half of the defendants sentenced for insider trading crimes Manhattan federal court since 2003 have managed to avoid prison because they cooperated with prosecutors. That’s 19 out of the 43 people. The average defendant…