The Supreme Court’s justices are looking to the Obama administration for advice about an appeal made to a ruling allowing the victims of R. Allen Stanford’s $7 billion Ponzi fraud can pursue law firms, insurance brokers, and outside parties for damages. The defendants, third party firms, want the court to…
In her Texas securities lawsuit, investor Lillian Hohenstein is suing Behringer Harvard REIT I, one of the biggest nontraded real estate investment trusts. Hohenstein, who purchased 1,275 shares from the trust between 2004 and 2008, claims that the REIT, Behringer Harvard Holdings LLC, President and Chief Executive Robert Aisner, other…
Three months after pleading guilty to obstruction of an SEC proceeding related to its probe of the Stanford Ponzi scam, ex-Stanford Financial Group chief investment officer Laura Pendergest-Holt, 38, has been sentenced to three years behind bars. Texas financier R. Allen Stanford defrauded investors of over $7 billion. Pendergest-Holt was…
A number of mutual funds are suing BP (BP) in Texas for common fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and statutory fraud. They are contending that they wouldn’t have paid top price for the company’s shares if they’d known the “truth.” Plaintiffs include Skandia Global Funds, Yorkshire Pensions Authority, and GAM Fund Management.…
According to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, the SEC violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure when it deposed a third party witness in its enforcement case dealing with an allegedly fraudulent life settlements accounting scam. The case is SEC v. Life Partners Holdings Inc.…
According to a study by The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and Blue Vault Partners LLC, most non-traded real estate investment trusts underperform compared to benchmarks. The study was released on June 1 and compared 17 “full-cycle” non-traded REITS that experienced liquidity events between 1990 and…
Reversing a trial jury’s ruling, the Texas Court of Appeals has said that a letter of intent to sell Fiduciary Financial Services of the Southwest, Inc.’s outstanding stock to Corilant Financial, L.P. and Corilant Financial Management, LLC is not an enforceable contract. The appeal’s court ruling also reverses the lower…
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has tossed out a would-be class action securities lawsuit challenging BP plc’s (BP) cancellation of a 2010 first quarter dividend announcement after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Per the court, the plaintiff did not demonstrate that BP or subsidiary BP American…
Five years after the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an emergency action to stop the Amerifirst securities fraud, all of the defendants accused of defrauding more than 500 investors-many of them senior citizens-of over $50 million in Texas and Florida have now been sentenced for their crimes. The last…
Accusing The SEC of negligent supervision and failure to act, a number of Stanford investors have filed a putative class action seeking damages from the Commission. In Anderson v. United States, the plaintiffs submitted an amended complaint to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana earlier this…