Investor Lawyers Blog

Senate Bill Would Double Statute of Limitations for The SEC to Pursue Securities Violations

Published on: August 7, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. has introduced a bill that would give the Securities and Exchange Commission a longer period of time to uncover and impose penalties for financial fraud. Under his proposal the statute of limitations for pursuing civil penalties would be extended from five years to ten years.

The bill comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gabelli v. SEC, in which the Court held that the current five-year statute to take action against wrongdoers begins when the fraud happened and not upon discovery. According to an announcement about the new legislation, which was published on the Senator’s website, the ruling in Gabelli has made it even harder for the Commission to take action against offenders by shortening how much time the regulator has to investigate and pursue violations of securities laws.

The Gabelli case involved allegations of fraud by Marc J. Gabelli, an investment adviser who managed the Gabelli Global Growth Fund, which is a mutual fund. The SEC said that the alleged fraud took place from 1999 and 2002.

Houston-Area Business Man Charged with Running $114M Texas Ponzi Scam

Published on: August 5, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Frederick Alan Voight with Texas securities fraud in running an alleged $114 million Ponzi scam that bilked investors. The regulator claims that the Houston-area man defrauded over 300 investors via multiple offerings of promissory notes that his companies DayStar Finding LP and F.A. Voight & Associates LP had issued.

In its complaint, the SEC said Voight recently raised $13.8 million that he claimed would be a loan to InterCore Inc., a company start up. The loan was supposed to fund the deployment of a DADS-a Driver Alertness Detection System.

Voight allegedly told prospective investors that the technology was to be installed in millions of buses and trucks. He promised 30 to 42% yearly interest rates on the promissory notes to be paid out by the company, which he said it could do “many, many times over.”

However, the Commission claims that Voight as aware he was making false claims because he was an InterCore board member and knew that the company was financially beleaguered and could not repay the loans. Voight allegedly used the money from new investors to pay off earlier investors or funnel them to InterCore via another two partnerships that belonged to him. The money would then be sent to subsidiary InterCore Research Canada, Inc.
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Ex-UBS and Citigroup Trader Gets 14 Years in Prison for Libor Rigging

Published on: August 5, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A jury in London has found Tom Hayes, a former trader at Citigroup (C) and UBS (UBS), guilty of multiple counts of conspiring to rig the London interbank offered rate. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Prosecutors accused him of heading up the scam to manipulate the yen Libor. They said that he asked rate setters and traders at UBS and other banks, as well as outside brokers, to manipulate the rate so that his trading positions would benefit. He also is accused of giving brokers incentives to help him get other banks to rig the rate.

Hayes had defended himself, arguing that he acted in line with industry standards and did not think his conduct was improper. He claims that his superiors knew about his activities.

Hayes was considered one of the top traders internationally. He made hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for UBS by trading interest-rate swaps. After going to Citigroup, he was fired in 2010 for rigging Libor. While he initially denied wrongdoing, he eventually entered into an agreement to plead guilty. As part of that deal he was to testify against alleged co-collaborators.

Aegis Capital Fined $950K by FINRA Over Penny Stock Scheme

Published on: August 4, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Aegis Capital Corp. must pay $950,000 to resolve allegations that it engaged in the improper sales of billions of shares of unregistered penny stock. The securities case was brought by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority last August. According to the self-regulatory organization, the New York-based brokerage firm facilitated a penny stock scheme that resulted in $24.5 million in customer profits and $1.1 million in commissions. Aegis is also accused of supervisory lapses related to anti-money laundering.

The SRO said that from April 2009 to June 2011 the brokerage firm liquidated about 3.9 billion shares of five penny stocks that were unregistered even though they should have been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, FINRA contends, Aegis and compliance officers disregarded red flags related to the transactions.

For example, an ex-securities broker who was barred from the industry was the one who referred the customers involved to Aegis. This broker controlled the activity in a number of accounts at the firm. Without looking further into this questionable scenario, Aegis sold the unregistered shares.
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Former Standard & Poor Executive’s Case Against the SEC Over In-House Judge Can Proceed

Published on: August 4, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

A U.S. district court judge says that Barbara Duka’s lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission can move forward. Duka used to be the head of Standard & Poor’s commercial mortgage-backed securities group. She is challenging the regulator’s decision to appoint an administrative law judge to preside over its securities fraud case against her. Duka wants her case heard in federal court.

The SEC claims that the former S & P executive hid the way the credit ratings agency had relaxed its requirements for calculating certain commercial mortgages. Their lawsuit against her came just as S & P consented to pay $77 million to resolve related charges by the regulator and the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

Issuers and investors were not happy when in 2011 S & P withdrew a preliminary rating on a $1.5 billion security. Following a partial restructuring, that deal later went to market. The SEC would go on to launch probes into why the rating was pulled, and also into six other deals that were rated that year. The SEC’s own internal probe uncovered inconsistencies in the methodologies for the way S & P rated existing and new deals.

Voya Financial Advisors Restricts Variable Annuities Sales

Published on: August 3, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

In the wake of regulator scrutiny, Voya Financial Advisors is once again placing restrictions on its sale of variable annuities. The regulators are wondering whether the products are appropriate for investors who are saving for retirement. Variable annuities have been getting a lot attention from regulators from FINRA, the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Labor Department, which oversees retirement benefit plans that provide tax benefits and are sponsored by employers.

InvestmentNews reports that according to internal documents, Voya said that it would no longer approve the sale of C share variable annuity contracts if the contract has add-ons that cost extra. It was just last month that the firm placed the same restriction on variable annuity contracts involving L shares.

Zoya brokers will now have to provide clients with an analysis, prepared by Morningstar Inc., of each annuity contract’s cost in dollars. They also will have to get a client’s signature before selling the new annuity.
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SEC Cases: Pennsylvania Lawyer is Charged with Insider Trading, San Diego Investment Adviser is Accused of Stealing Client Funds, and New York Man is Arrested for Fraud

Published on: August 2, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SEC Accuses Pennsylvania Attorney of Insider Trading
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Herbert K. Sudfeld with insider trading ahead of the announcement that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and Harleysville were about to merge in a $760 million deal. The regulator contends that the Pennsylvania attorney illegally traded on the information, which caused Harleysville’s stock price to rise 87% when the announcement went public.

Sudfeld, who was a real estate partner at a law firm that gave Harleysville counsel on the merger, learned about the impending deal from a conversation involving a lawyer and the legal assistant they shared. That attorney was involved in the deal.

Sudfeld is accused of stealing the information and buying Harleysville stock. After the merger was announced, he purportedly sold the share he had bought, making about $79,000 in illegal profits. Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have filed a parallel criminal action against him.

San Diego Investment Adviser Accused of Stealing Client Money, Running Ponzi Scam
Paul Lee Moore and his now defunct investment advisory firm are charged with bilking client funds and operating a Ponzi scheme. According to the complaint filed by the SEC, Moore and Coast Capital Management raised $2.6 million from clients, and he allegedly siphoned almost $2 million for his personal spending.

The regulator said that Moore took the rest of the money and, in Ponzi scam-fashion, paid earlier clients with funds brought in by new clients. He is accused of sending out bogus account statements to clients, as well as sharing these statements with prospective clients. The California investment adviser purportedly lied about his educational background, employment history, as well as about how much Coast Capital managed in assets.
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Ex-Head of Chicago Investment Firm Gets 6-Year Sentence for $9M Ponzi Scam

Published on: July 31, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Neal Goyal, the former head of Caldera Investment Group and Blue Blue Horizon Asset Management, has been sentenced to six years behind bars for bilking over 40 investors of more than $9 million in a Ponzi scam. Prosecutors contend that over the eight years that the 34-year-old ran the scam, pretending to be a hedge fund manager, he made just limited trades and on only some of the funds. The majority of his victims were family and friends from his Hindu community.

Goyal told investors that the four private funds he managed would employ a long-short trading strategy. Instead, he ran a Ponzi scam, paying off earlier investors with new investors’ money.

He would go on to use over $2 million of their funds on his lavish lifestyle, including a $1.5 million home, luxury car leases, travel, and expensive dinners. He also put some of the money into his wife’s business ventures and his father-in-law’s failing tavern. He took his company staff on an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Dominican Republic. The group trip included a yacht and butler service at a five-star resort.
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U.S. DOJ Wants Supreme Court To Review Major Insider Trading Ruling that Reversed the Convictions of Hedge Fund Managers

Published on: July 31, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The U.S. Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to review the ruling in United States v. Newman that overturned the convictions of hedge fund managers Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson. The defendants were accused of trading on secondhand information they received regarding earnings announcements for Nvidia and Dell. The information was not public at the time.

The two men denied the charges, which accused them of involvement in a scheme that made over $70 million from illegally trading technical stock. Chiasson and Newman were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 2012.

Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit threw out the convictions. The court found that the government failed to prove that the tipper had benefited from the alleged scam.

Neither Chiasson nor Newman ever directly interacted with the employees that were the source of the purported tips, which were then passed on to others. The Second Court said that it reversed the convictions because the jurors who ruled on the case were not told that they had to find that the two men knew that the tippers had benefited in return for disclosing the confidential information.

Cetera Shutters J.P. Turner, Claims Move Is Not Part of Broader Firm Consolidation

Published on: July 30, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Cetera Financial Group is shutting down one of its brokerage firms, J.P. Turner & Co., shortly after its purchase. Larry Roth, the independent financial network’s CEO, told InvestmentNews that the move is not part of a broader consolidation involving its different firms.

About half of J.P. Turner’s 300 investment advisers have been invited to work at Summit Brokerage Services Inc., which is also owned by Cetera. Roth has indicated the reason for the closing of J.P. Turner is so its advisers can more swiftly access the complete spectrum of support and services offered by Cetera’s network through business-to-business provider Pershing, LLC. J.P. Turner had worked with a different clearing firm as, reportedly, Pershing had refused to do business with J.P. Turner because of their checkered past.

According to Securities Lawyer and Shepherd Smith Edwards Partner Sam Edwards, “It is not surprising Pershing did not want to clear trades for J.P . Turner as the firm has long had a reputation among those in the industry, and especially attorneys representing customers, as one willing to take on brokers and allow trading that other firms would not permit. This has resulted in our firm representing many J.P. Turner clients over the years and those cases have been among some of the more egregious we have seen.”
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