Investor Lawyers Blog

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.

Massachusetts Regulator Galvin Investigates Whether Exchanges Are Giving Kickbacks to Brokers for Making Institutional Investor Trades

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

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin is probing whether there are brokers who are getting paid kickbacks by exchanges in return for investor trades. The investigation comes in the wake of an op-ed article published in The New York Times last month alleging that there are financial representatives who have been sending orders to specific exchanges for these kickbacks, referred to as “rebates,” even if it means poorer results for their institutional investors.

The op-ed was written by Yale Law Professor Jonathan Macey and Yale University Chief Investment Officer David Swensen. Already, the state regulator has sent inquiry letters to Morgan Stanley & Co. (MS), E*TRADE Securities, Charles Schwab & Co. (SCHW), and Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC.

According to the article, because of these “rebates,” brokers are frequently selecting less favorable trades for their institutional investors clients to use these exchanges. If this is true, then it would be distressing considering that institutional brokers are legally bound to make trades on the exchange that has the terms that are most favorable for a client. Failure to do so could be grounds for a securities case. Meantime, it is supposed to be up to the exchanges, all 12 of them, to compete to provide the best trading opportunities.

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.

$5M Insider Trading Case Leads to Criminal Arrests

Published on: August 17, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought insider trading case charges against seven people who made millions of dollars while insider trading on dozens of upcoming acquisitions and mergers involving 30 corporate deals. The regulator’s complaint contends that Daniel Rivas, who used to be a bank IT employee, misused the access he had to a computer system by tipping four people with information that they then used to trade. Some of the those whom Rivas tipped allegedly also tipped other people, who tipped others, too.

InvestmentNews identified the bank that Rivas worked for at the time of the misconduct as Bank of America (BAC). (Bank of America Merrill Lynch later fired Rivas, who was then hired by RBC Capital Markets. In the wake of the insider trading allegations against him, Rivas was suspended by RBC.)

Rivas often tipped James Moodhe, who is the father of his girlfriend, using handwritten notes. Moodhe made approximately $2M from trading on the tips and shared the information with financial adviser Michael Siva, whom InvestmentNews identifies as a former Morgan Stanley (MS) broker.

Securities Fraud: Investment Manager is Accused of Bilking Retired Teacher of $950K, Ex-U. Va Football Player is on Trial in $9M, and Former Investment Adviser Pleads Guilty

Published on: August 16, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Wyoming Investment Manager Indicted for Allegedly Bilking Retired Investor
Tyris D. Maxey has been indicted on multiple counts of wire fraud and he was arrested this week. Maxey, a Wyoming investment manager, owns RB Mister Enterprises LLC. He allegedly convinced a retired school teacher to give him about $950K to invest and then using almost all of the funds on his own expenses.

Meantime, any investments he made with the investor’s money experienced “heavy losses.” Funds that he gave to the investor, which he claimed were returns, were actually the same funds that the teacher had given him to invest.

Maxey pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges of financial fraud.

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.

Ex-Investment Banker is Sentenced for Tribal Bond Fraud

Published on: August 11, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Jason Galanis, an ex-investment banker, who is already serving eleven years behind bars for stock rigging, has been sentenced to five years in prison for fraud involving a Native American tribal bond. He must forfeit over $43M and pay nearly $44M of restitution.

In the tribal bond scam, Galanis and his father John Galanis are accused of convincing Oglala Sioux Tribe affiliate Wakpamni Lake Community Corp. of issuing $60M in municipal bonds. The two of them and others then misappropriated the proceeds from the bonds, including $8.5M for Jason personally. Meantime, bond investors were left with worthless securities while the tribal corporation had no means of paying the interest payments that it owed on the bonds.

According to the prosecution, the bond scam bilked Galanis’ tribal bond clients and the investing public while “defrauding the Native American tribe into issuing bonds.” Galanis and his co-conspirators sold the bonds, which were illiquid, to pension funds, and stole the profits. Meantime, they allegedly hid conflicts of interest and the fact that the bonds were not liquid.

Securities News: Citigroup Settles Libor Lawsuit for $130M, Apollo Global is Sued for Fraud, and Ex-MSD Capital Analyst is Sentenced After Insider Trading

Published on: August 10, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Citigroup to Pay Plaintiffs Suing Over Libor Rigging

Citigroup Inc. (C) will resolve a private US antitrust lawsuit alleging Libor manipulation by paying plaintiffs $130M. The litigation was brought by “over-the-counter” investors who engaged in direct transactions with banks that belonged to the panel that determines London Interbank Offered Rate.

As part of the proposed preliminary settlement, the bank will pay the money to a fund for future class members. It also will cooperate with the lawsuits brought against other banks also accused of involvement in Libor rigging. Despite settling the case, however, Citigroup is not admitting or denying any wrongdoing.

Madoff Ponzi Scam Caused Investors to Pull $363B in Investments, Reports Study

Published on: August 9, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

According to a new study recently published in The Review of Financial Studies, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scam not only bilked over 10,000 investors of billions of dollars, but it also caused many in the investing public to stop trusting the financial industry. The study is called Trust Busting: The Effect of Fraud on Investor Behavior.

Researchers were able to track the impact of the Madoff fraud outside of the investors who were directly impacted because Madoff, who is Jewish, worked primarily with rich, older Jewish investors. Assistant Professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell Scott Yonker, who is a co-author of the study, describes the Madoff Ponzi Scam as an affinity scam in that it targeted investors who had similar backgrounds. That said, his victims included retail investors, wealthy investors, famous investors, celebrities, and various entities and financial funds.

The study found that once the Madoff Ponzi scheme became public knowledge, investors who either personally knew his victims or lived in the areas where his victims lived withdrew $363B from their financial advisers and placed their funds in banks instead—that’s almost 20 times more than the $17B that Madoff has been ordered to pay in restitution to his investors.

Ex-Hedge Fund Manager Martin Shkreli is Convicted of Securities Fraud

Published on: August 7, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A jury has found former pharmaceutical CEO and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli guilty of securities fraud in connection with his two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, as well as of conspiracy to commit securities fraud involving shares of the drug company Retrophin, which he founded.

Prosecutors had said that Shkreli misled investors, losing their money on bad stock picks while scheming to try recover millions of dollars of these losses. At one point, Shkreli claimed he had $40M in one hedge fund when it had only $300 in the bank.

That said, prosecutors experienced some challenges in proving their criminal case against the ex-hedge fund manager. For example, during the trial, a number of rich Texan financiers admitted that Shkreli’s scam made them money, sometimes even double or triple of what they invested, when Retrophin’s stock went public.