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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission says that a federal court has issued a supplemental Consent Order of Permanent Injunction mandating that Steven Lyn Scott pay over $760,000 in restitution, a $700K penalty, as well as post-judgment interest for his involvement in a Forex commodity pool scam. It was the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas that put out the order, which comes after a CFTC enforcement action charged the Dallas resident with customer fund misappropriation, solicitation fraud, and registration violations related to running a commodity pool scam.

According to The Court, from early January 2009 through at least the end of March 2011, Scott fraudulently solicited a minimum of $1,146,000 from over 40 pool participants for their involvement in pool investment vehicles that were to trade in contracts, off-exchange agreements, or transactions in foreign currency on a margined or leveraged basis. Many of the participants lived in Texas and included his friends, relatives, and others.

A May 5, 2014 Consent Order, issued earlier by this same court, noted that Scott invoked the name of his entity Stewardship Financial Exchange when pursuing pool participants. He is accused of guaranteeing returns of 2-5% a month for participants that signed up for six months.

Registered investment adviser Hanson McClain is suing Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. (AMP) and Thomas Chandler for purportedly taking confidential client data and soliciting its customers. The investment adviser says that not only is this a contract breach but also it violates California law. Chandler was formerly an investment adviser for Hanson McClain, which has about $1.6 billion in assets under management.

Hanson McClain submitted its complaint in September, just days after Chandler departed. In November, the court allowed a preliminary injunction barring Ameriprise and Chandler from getting in touch with the clients under dispute and ordering them to give back certain documents until the case is resolved. In December, the RIA submitted an amended complaint requesting a permanent injunction barring Chandler from soliciting clients. Hanson McClain wants compensatory damages as well as the return of its clients’ information.

The firm says that Chandler took the data from its servers, moving the information to a personal email account. The data allegedly includes account numbers, names, net worth, and other pertinent information for clients whose total net worth is around $540,000. Hanson McClain also claims that Chandler asked for the emails of its “platinum” clients and then connected with them via LinkedIn. The RIA contends that Ameriprise and one of its branch managers worked with Chandler to take the information.

Reuters and Bloomberg are reporting that according to person familiar with the case, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has consented in principal to resolve a class action case related to Bear Stearns’ sale of $17.58B of faulty mortgage securities for $500 million. JPMorgan purchased Bear Stearns in 2008.

The agreement settles claims that Bear Stearns violated federal securities laws when, from May 2006 to April 2007. it sold certificates backed by over 47,000 primarily subprime and low documentation “Alt-A” mortgages in over a dozen offerings. Almost all certificates were eventually reduced to “junk” status even though 92% of them had been given “trip-A” ratings previously.

The plaintiffs, led by the New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund and, the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, claim that offering documents included misleading and false statements about underwriting guidelines that Bear’s EMC Mortgage unit and other lenders used, as well as inaccuracies related to associated property appraisals. According to the lawsuit, because of the omissions and false statements, the class bought certificates that were a lot risker than what they were represented as and unequal in quality to other investments that received the same credit rating.

A Securities and Exchange Commission administrative law judge says that investment advisers Larry Grossman and Gregory Adams must pay over $6.3M in restitution and fines for misleading clients who invested in hedge funds tied to Ponzi fraud mastermind Bernie Madoff. Administrative law judge Brenda Murray issued her ruling last month.

The two investment advisers are Sovereign International Asset Management founder Larry Grossman and Gregory Adams, who agreed to buy Sovereign from Grossman in 2008. The firm filed for bankruptcy four years later.

Per the SEC administrative complaint, Grossman did not know that the two hedge funds that he primarily recommended to clients were linked to Madoff. The Commission contends that Grossman violated his fiduciary duties to his clients when he neglected to conduct due diligence on the funds, which were run by a man named Nickolai Battoo. Grossman also purportedly did not notify clients that he was getting paid $3.4 million in consulting fees and referral money for recommending certain funds. After Grossman sold Sovereign to Adams, the former owner continued working in several capacities at the firm and never actually told clients that the sale even happened.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a civil case against alternative fund manager Daniel Thibeault accusing him of taking some $16 million in assets from the GL Beyond Income Fund (GLBFX). Thibeault was arrested on securities fraud charges over the same matter last month.

According to the SEC, Thibeault took out faked loans using Taft Financial Services, which is an intermediary that he allegedly controlled, to steal money from the funds. The purported securities scam is said to have begun in 2013, after the GL fund started losing money. The Commission says that in certain cases documents for the loans that were withdrawn via Taft are missing or had errors in them, including inaccurate birth dates for borrowers.

The regulator’s complaint also names GL Investment Services, which Thibeault indirectly owns. The registered investment adviser, which had about $130 million in assets from approximately 700 clients, is accused of advising customers to put money in the GL fund.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. says that Pershing, a Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK) unit, must pay $3 million for violations involving the Customer Protection Rule. According to the self-regulatory organization, for about nine months between ’10 and ’11, the clearing firm did not put aside the money needed for a reserve account, per FINRA’s deposit requirements.

The SRO said that deficiencies, from $4 million to $220 million, came from Pershing’s “misinterpretation” of aspects of the rule, as well as inadequate supervision over the way the firm calculated what needed to be put in reserve. Also, over a certain time period, Pershing did not promptly get or keep up physical possession or control of certain customers’ margin securities. This resulted in nearly four dozen new control or possession deficits, while significantly raising the number of existing control or possession deficits.

The Customer Protection Rule mandates that brokerage firms maintain custody of customer cash and securities in order to comply with the following requirements: keep a cash reserve or qualified securities in a bank account that has at least the equivalent value of the net cash the broker-dealer owes customers, as well as obtain and keep up control or physical possession over customers’ excess and fully paid margin securities.

Ambac Assurance filed a mortgage bond lawsuit against Bank of America (BAC) for what it claims were losses of hundreds of millions of dollars from insuring over $1.6B of securities. The holding company says that the loans were at least partially backed by high-risk mortgages from the bank’s Countrywide Home Loans unit.

According to the mortgage bond lawsuit, Ambac contends that Countrywide lied about the quality of its underwriting of loans that were backing the securities, which were issued in several transactions over a two-year period prior to the acquisition of the unit by Bank of America in 2008. The holding company said that it could be facing potential claims greater than $600 million. It claims that the loan pools backing the certificates it insured have lost billions of dollars. Ambac said that if it had known Countrywide lied it would have never guaranteed payments.

This is not the first time that Ambac has sued Bank of America Corp. In 2010, the company filed a $16.7 billion mortgage-backed securities case against the bank. In that securities case, Ambac claimed that Countrywide fraudulently persuaded Ambac to insure bonds with loans that were not properly made.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority proposal mandating that broker-dealers conduct more rigorous background checks on new hires. Per the new rule, brokerage firms must implement written procedures for confirming the completeness and accuracy of a broker’s registration data on a Form U4.

Firms will have to search “reasonably available public records” of both new hires and new registrants within 30 days of a U4’s submission to FINRA.

In other FINRA news, the self-regulatory organization has just released its exam and regulatory priorities for 2015. The regulator stated that the majority of compliance problems could be worked out if only broker-dealers always acted in their clients’ best interests. The statement was a significant one, considering that brokers are currently just obligated to make sure that they investments they recommend are suitable for clients.

Plaintiffs in Puerto Rico who say they are the beneficiaries of a trust have filed a securities lawsuit against UBS Financial Services (UBS). The beneficiaries’ complaint asserts that UBS in Puerto Rico breached its duty to properly manage funds linked to UBS’s proprietary closed-end Puerto Rico bond funds.

The beneficiaries of Nellie Sánchez Carmona’s estate claim that the brokerage firm acted against their best interests when it opted to keep the trust invested in the proprietary funds-a move that earned UBS underwriting and management fees, along with commissions, and interest. The beneficiaries contend that UBS and its subsidiaries purposely prevented Sánchez Carmona from collecting benefits she was owed so that the firm could keep investing her money in the closed-end funds, which were issued by the firm, and continue to collect fees.

Also, according to the plaintiffs, for 10 years UBS prevented Sánchez Carmona from finding out that she was a beneficiary of the trust, which was set up by her husband Robert Hargen. Even though he passed away several years ago, UBS, in federal filings up to at least 2010, represented that Hargen was still alive and in possession of the trust.

Morgan Stanley (MS) has let go of Galen Marsh, a 30-year-old financial adviser in its wealth management group, for stealing client information and allegedly making some of the data that he took available online. Some 350,000 of the brokerage firm’s 3.5 million wirehouse clients were affected. About 900 clients’ account names and numbers were briefly posted on the Internet.

Morgan Stanley discovered that Marsh had downloaded the client data, including account numbers, names, states of residence, and asset values. In a statement, the firm said that there is no proof of any financial loss sustained by the clients whose information was stolen. (Social security numbers and account passwords were not taken.)

The firm says it is notifying the clients who were affected. It has also reached out to regulators and law enforcement.

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