Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Galvin is ordering seven brokerage firms to pay $238K in fines for their involvement in the proxy fraud committed by Realty Capital Securities. The broker-dealers are:<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Voya Financial Advisors Inc. (VOYA)
\n\u00b7 Invest Financial Corp.
\n\u00b7 FMN Capital Corp.
\n\u00b7 Platinum Wealth Partners Inc.
\n\u00b7 Newbridge Securities Corp.
\n\u00b7 TKG Financial
\n\u00b7 Pariter Securities<\/p>\n
Galvin claims that brokers at the firms worked with RCS to cast the bogus proxy votes involving American Realty Capital Healthcare Trust II and American Realty Capital Trust V\u2014both nontraded real estate investment trusts\u2014and Business Development Corp. of America, which is a nontraded business development company. The state\u2019s securities division claimed that RCS employees pretended to be shareholders so they could cast proxy votes to the benefit of management. The votes were key in the merger between American Realty Corp., which is a Real Capital Securities affiliate, and Apollo Global Management. The deal was linked to a larger deal of $378M between AR Capital and Apollo.<\/p>\n