{"id":1142,"date":"2012-10-20T17:44:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T17:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stockbrokerfraudblog.com\/2012\/10\/securities_fraud_roundup_ekn_f"},"modified":"2022-03-09T16:29:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T22:29:04","slug":"securities-fraud-roundup-ekn-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/securities-fraud-roundup-ekn-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Securities Fraud Roundup: EKN Financial Services Expelled from FINRA, SRO\u2019s CEO Says Complex Products Should Be Subject to Stricter Scrutiny, and Federal Regulators Now Paying Closer Attention to Securities Law Violations that Lead to Victim Hardships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tThe Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has expelled EKN Financial Services for a number of compliance violations and for letting firm CEO Anthony Ottimo act in the capacity of supervisor even after the Securities and Exchange Commission had barred him from doing so in 2008. FINRA has barred Ottimo from the securities industry, in addition to barring ex-EKN President Thomas Giugliano from working in a principal role. The SRO contends that through Ottimo and Giugliano, EKN violated a number of SEC and NASD\/FINRA rules and federal securities laws, including those involving net capital deficiencies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/\">anti-money laundering violations<\/a>, and reporting failures.<\/p>\n<p>According to FINRA, from 2008 to 2011 Ottimo took on a supervisory role despite the SEC bar. He also continued to serve as CEO even though he wasn&#8217;t a registered principal. Meantime, Giugliano and the financial firm are accused of misrepresenting to FINRA that Ottimo wasn&#8217;t serving in these roles. The SRO also found that EKN made numerous anti-money laundering violations, such as not setting up a satisfactory AML compliance program to identify and report suspect activity, preparing net capital computations that were not accurate, failing to properly report net capital deficiencies, not accurately detailing liabilities and cost in its records and books, and neglecting to tell FINRA that Giugliano and Ottimo had hundreds of thousands of dollars in liens and judgments that hadn&#8217;t been satisfied.<\/p>\n<p>Federal regulators have lately been more alert to potential securities law violations because of the devastating effect such misconduct can have on the lives of victims. Other examples include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/\">boiler room scams<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/\">affinity fraud<\/a>, accounting fraud, misappropriation, and Ponzi schemes, which are just some of the violations that target individual investors, including the elderly and the sick, draining many of them of their life savings. Many such violations that impact investors directly are ones generally involving more low profile incidents that the public doesn&#8217;t usually hear about. <\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/securities-fraud-roundup-ekn-f\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Securities Fraud Roundup: EKN Financial Services Expelled from FINRA, SRO\u2019s CEO Says Complex Products Should Be Subject to Stricter Scrutiny, and Federal Regulators Now Paying Closer Attention to Securities Law Violations that Lead to Victim Hardships\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has expelled EKN Financial Services for a number of compliance violations and for letting firm CEO Anthony Ottimo act in the capacity of supervisor even after the Securities and Exchange Commission had barred him from doing so in 2008. FINRA has barred Ottimo from the securities industry, in addition to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3739,3741],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finra","category-securities-fraud"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Securities Fraud Roundup: EKN Financial Services Expelled from FINRA, SRO\u2019s CEO Says Complex Products Should Be Subject to Stricter Scrutiny, and Federal Regulators Now Paying Closer Attention to Securities Law Violations that Lead to Victim Hardships &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; October 20, 2012<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has expelled EKN Financial Services for a number of compliance violations and for letting firm CEO Anthony &#8212; October 20, 2012\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/securities-fraud-roundup-ekn-f\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Securities Fraud Roundup: EKN Financial Services Expelled from FINRA, SRO\u2019s CEO Says Complex Products Should Be Subject to Stricter Scrutiny, and Federal Regulators Now Paying Closer Attention to Securities Law Violations that Lead to Victim Hardships &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; October 20, 2012\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has expelled EKN Financial Services for a number of compliance violations and for letting firm CEO Anthony &#8212; October 20, 2012\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Shepherd Smith Edwards &amp; 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