FINRA

FINRA Hearing Panel Orders C.L. King & Associates to Pay $750K Over Inadequate AML Program

Published on: September 13, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority extended hearing panel has ordered brokerage firm C.L. King & Associates, Inc. to pay a $750,000 for purportedly acting negligently by making material representations and omissions to issuers in connections with debt securities redemptions for a hedge fund customer. The panel said that the broker-dealer and Gregg Alan Miller, its Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officer, did not put into place a reasonable AML program and failed to adequately react to red flags indicating that the liquidation of billions of penny stock shares involving two customers might be signs of suspect activity. Miller has been suspended from fulfilling a principal role for half a year and he must pay a $20K fine.

Per the hearing panel’s ruling, the hedge fund’s manager set up joint accounts at the firm. A number of terminally ill people were given joint tenancy with survivorship rights to the accounts and they were paid $10K, after which they gave up their ownership rights to the assets in the accounts.

The accounts were used to buy corporate bonds at reduced rates that came with a survivor option. This feature made it possible for the manager, as the survivor of the joint account, to redeem investments from issuers through the brokerage firm for the full principal figure prior to maturity once the joint tenant had died. The FINRA panel said that CL King had a duty to let issuers know when the redemption process was taking place that the joint tenants that were terminally ill and not beneficiaries of the investments.

Securities Fraud: Mike Tyson’s Ex-Financial Adviser Gets 33-Month Prison Term, Alleged $15M Oil Drilling Investment Scam Leads to SEC Charges, and FINRA Warns Investors of Possible Stock Schemes After Hurricane Harvey

Published on: September 12, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Financial Adviser Who Bilked Athletes, Including Mike Tyson, is Sentenced

Former SFX Financial Advisory Management Enterprises financial advisor Brian Ourand is sentenced to thirty years behind bars after he bilked a number of professional athletes, including former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, ex-NBA basketball players Glen Rice and Dikembe Mutombo, and others. Ourand must also pay back $1M of what he stole.

Not only is he accused of forging the pro athletes’ signatures on checks that he cashed but also of taking credit cards out against these clients’ accounts to cover his own spending, including restaurants, clothing, and other bills. SFX fired him in 2011.

In 2015, Ourand was charged with wire fraud, federal mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft charges. He pleaded guilty to one criminal count of wire fraud.

FINRA Bars Ex-HSBC Securities Broker Over Alleged $200K Senior Financial Fraud

Published on: August 30, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is barring Jaime R. Rodriguez, an ex-HSBC Securities (HSBC) broker, in the wake of a charge accusing him of bilking an older customer, who is also legally blind, of $200K. HSBC fired Rodriguez in 2014.

Rodriguez is accused of using about $70K of the client’s money in 2012 to buy an apartment that was supposed to be for the customer. However, because the man couldn’t read or see the documents related to the purchase, he did not know that Rodriguez had named himself as the sole beneficial owner.

According to InvestmentNews, Rodriguez met the man in 2010 and began helping him with his errands. Also in 2012, Rodriguez purportedly recommended to the client that they set up a joint account together so that the then-HSBC broker could assist him in paying his bills. The account was opened using about $42K of the client’s money and at one point it held $153K.

Former Investment Adviser Gets Five Years in Prison for Stealing Over $600K From Clients

Published on: August 29, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Aaron J. Johnson, a former registered investment adviser who ran Capital Advisors until state regulators took back his firm’s registration in 2013, is sentenced to five years behind bars for financial fraud. Johnson, 37, claimed that he stole over $600K from clients because he suffered a mental health breakdown.

According to prosecutors, Johnson took money from middle-class clients’ retirement accounts and charged them excessive fees to the point that he’d practically drained their funds. After Capital Advisors lost its registration, Johnson became affiliated with Trade PMR, a Florida-based firm that offers custody and brokerage services for investment advisers that are registered. Prosecutors contend that even then Johnson kept stealing from clients despite the fact that he was now under investigation. Prosecutors said that after Trade PMR began to question the fees that Johnson charged clients, including $3200 in client fees for an account that only held $13K in assets, the ex-adviser generated fraudulent documents as proof that his actions were warranted. He drained the account of the client, who was a single mom with three kids, until there was only $5 left.

Johnson has been ordered to pay back everyone that he defrauded.

Five Cetera Broker-Dealers Settle With FINRA for $3.3M Overcharging Mutual Fund Sales Fees to Charitable Organizations and Retirement Plans

Published on: August 23, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

In a settlement with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a number of Cetera Financial Group brokerage firms have agreed to collectively pay $3.3M for not properly supervising whether mutual fund sales charge waivers were applied correctly clients at charitable organizations and in retirement plans. The firms that have settled include Cetera Financial Specialists, Cetera Investment Services, Summit Brokerage Services, First Allied Securities, and Girard Securities.

The $3.3M is how much these clients were excessively charged plus interest for the mutual funds that they bought from July 2009 to July 2017. According to the self-regulatory organization, the brokerage firms either: charged front-end sales charges to charitable organization and retirement plan customers that bought A shares in mutual funds even though they were eligible to have these fees waived or sold them class C/B shares while charging them back-end sales charges and “higher ongoing fees and expenses.”

FINRA accused the Cetera firms of not reasonably supervising the way the sales charges waivers were applied to the mutual fund sales and leaving it up to financial advisers to decide whether the waivers should be applied. The SRO also contends that the broker-dealers did not maintain written policies and procedures that were adequate enough to help financial advisers in making such determinations.

Despite FINRA Securities Arbitration Victory Against Wine Mogul, Fidelity is Accused of Prioritizing Its Own Interests

Published on: August 21, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

In the securities arbitration claim brought by a wine mogul against Fidelity Brokerage Services, a Financial Industry Regulatory panel may not have ordered the financial firm to pay claimant Peter Deutsch compensation but that doesn’t mean the panelists believe that the broker-dealer placed its former client’s interests before its own.

Deutsch’s family’s company, Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, markets Yellow Tail and Beaujolais Nouveau wines. He is accusing Fidelity of not handling his account properly when he bet on Chinese shares. He claims that this cost him up to $436M.

Deutsch contends that he believed Fidelity unit Fidelity Family Office when it told him his best interests were the firm’s priority but they then allegedly proceeded to ignore what he wanted and lent out shares belonging to him. The brokerage unit also stopped Deutsch’s trading in China Medical Technology shares when it prevented him from buying an additional 50 million stock shares. Now he claims that this foiled his attempt to gain a controlling stake in the company.

Ruling on Deutsch’s bid for damages last month, the arbitrators turned down that request “in its entirety” on the grounds that they believe he would have lost money anyway even if Fidelity had dealt with his account differently. The panel agreed with the firm in that calculating damages could not be done in a way that wasn’t based on hypotheticals. The arbitrators didn’t weigh in on his claim that the broker-dealer acted inappropriately by lending his shares to short-sellers.

Investors Continue to Bring Puerto Rico Bond Fraud Claims Against UBS For, Among Other Things, Encouraging Them to Use Non-Purpose Lines of Credit to Purchase Securities

Published on: August 18, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Two years after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) barred former UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico (UBS-PR) broker Jose Ramirez, nicknamed the Whopper, our UBS Puerto Rico fraud attorneys are continuing to provide representation to investors who sustained losses because they took his and other UBS-PR brokers’ advice to borrow from credit lines in order to invest in even more securities. If you are one of these investors and you would like to explore your legal options, please contact Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LTD LLP today.

It was in 2015 that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought charges against Ramirez accusing him of fraud in the offer and sale of $50 million of UBS-PR affiliated, non-exchange traded closed-end mutual funds. The former UBS broker allegedly enriched himself by advising certain customers to use non-purpose credit lines that a firm affiliate, UBS Bank USA, was offering so that they could buy even more shares.

These customers were not, in fact, allowed to use credit lines to buy the securities and Ramirez allegedly knew this. He is accused of getting around restrictions by telling customers to move money to a bank that had no affiliation with UBS and then re-depositing the funds to their UBS Puerto Rico brokerage account in order to buy additional closed-end mutual funds or Puerto Rico bonds. Such a scheme was a violation of numerous rules and regulations and, if misrepresented to the investors as the SEC has alleged, would have been a major legal violation.

FINRA Cases: Hallmark Investments is Expelled For Fraud and FSC Securities Must Pay $592K Over Exchange-Traded Fund Sales

Published on: August 15, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Investment Firm and Its CEO Are Expelled and Barred for Inflating the Price of Shares Before Selling Them

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has expelled Hallmark Investments and barred Steven G. Dash, who is the firm’s CEO, over a securities scam that involved selling stocks at inflated prices. According to the self-regulatory organization, Hallmark, Dash, and firm representative Stephen P. Zipkin used an outside broker-dealer and engaged in manipulative trading, as well as in trade confirmations that were misleading, to sell almost 40,000 shares of stock to 14 customers at prices that were fraudulently inflated. Zipkin has been suspended by FINRA for two years and he will have to pay over $18K in restitution.

Hallmark purportedly employed a trading scam to sell the Avalanche shares that they owned at $3/share. Meantime, the prices for Avalanche were selling at the public offering price of $2.05/share and Hallmark sold other Avalanche shares to other customers for as low as 80 cents/share. Also, the investment firm, Zipkin, and Dash failed to tell customers that Hallmark owned the shares they were buying or that it was marking up the transactions (or that the shares could be bought for less on the open market) even as it sold the shares to others at lower prices.

Securities News: Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Interactive Brokers Are Fined for Market Access Violations & Halliburton Settles FCPA Charges for $29.2M

Published on: July 28, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Four Firms Are Ordered to Pay $4.75M for Market Access Rule Violations

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, CBOE Holdings company Bats, the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and their affiliated Exchanges have fined four financial firms $4.75M collectively for violating the Securities Exchange Act of 1934’s Rule 15c3-5, which is also known as the Market Access Rule. The fines are: $2.5M for Deutsche Bank (DB), $800K for J.P. Morgan (JPM), $1M for Citigroup (C), and $450K for Interactive Brokers (IBKR).

The firms have given market access to quite a number clients that engage in millions of trades daily. However, according to FINRA, Bats, NASDAQ, and NYSE, when doing so, they purportedly did not comply with at least one of the Market Access Rule’s provisions when they did not put in place certain risk management controls and procedures so that orders that were “erroneous or duplicative,” or went beyond certain kinds of thresholds, could be detected or prevented. The firms are also accused of not having systems in place for properly supervising customer trading so that “potentially volatile and manipulative activity” could be avoided.

Securities Fraud: Massachusetts Hedge Fund Manager Sentenced to 30 Months for Bilking Investors, Northeast Securities Ordered to Pay Customer $1.8M, and Ex-State Street Executive Pleads Guilty in Scheme Involving Secret Commissions

Published on: July 12, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

After Pleading Guilty, Massachusetts Money Manager Must Repay Investors
Stephen Eubanks is sentenced to 30 months behind bars for bilking investors of $437K. He also must pay restitution in that amount to his more than 20 victims.

Eubanks presented himself as a hedge fund manager at Eubiquity Capital, which he founded. He raised over $700K from investors and claimed that he was running a hedge fund that had ties with UBS (UBS), TD Ameritrade (AMTD), Fidelity, and Goldman Sachs (GS).

While Eubanks invested some of the clients’ funds for them he also spent a healthy amount of their money on his own spending. Eubanks also is accused of on occasion operating his fund as if it were a Ponzi scam.