Broker Fraud

FINRA Goes After Two Brokers for Variable Annuity Replacement Fraud

Published on: October 18, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has suspended broker Cecil Ernest Nivens for two years for allegedly causing harm variable annuity (VA) investors who were his customers. According to the self-regulatory organization’s filing, Nivens failed to abide by his firm’s written supervisory procedures when he didn’t properly process certain variable universal life purchase transactions as replacement trades even though he was the one who recommended that each purchase be paid for from an existing variable annuity fund.

Nivens earned over $185K in commissions for the variable annuity life purchase transactions, in addition to commissions he was already paid for the variable annuities when they were sold to the same customers. Now, Nivens must disgorge those commissions.

FINRA accused Nivens of causing “considerable” harm to customers. In addition to the excessive commissions, eight of his customers paid over $4K in unnecessary surrender charges. His former firm has paid over $55K to settle VUL fraud customer complaints involving him.

Ex-Broker Ordered to Pay $550K For Bilking Modest Income Investors in ETN/ETF Fraud Had Previous Unsuitable Investment Claims Against Him

Published on: October 5, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has secured a final judgment by default in its broker fraud case against Demitrios Hallas. The former broker was charged by the regulator in April for allegedly trading unsuitable investment products in five customers’ accounts. The customers were unsophisticated investors with not much, if any, experience in investing. Their net worth and income levels were modest enough that risky investments were not a good fit for their portfolios.

According to the regulator’s complaint, in a period of a little over a year, Hallas traded 179 daily leveraged exchange traded funds and exchange traded notes in these accounts. (Both ETFs and ETNs products are considered high-risk, volatile, and only suitable for sophisticated investors.)

The SEC said that Hallas had no reasonable grounds for recommending these investments to customers. Meantime, the latter were charged fees and commissions of about $128K. The net loss sustained over all the positions was about $170K.

Three Ex-Alexander Capital Brokers Charged with Making Unsuitable Recommendations That Cost Investors

Published on: September 28, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against former Alexander Capital brokers who are accused of making unsuitable recommendations that garnered them commissions while causing investors to sustain significant losses. All three men, Rocco Roveccio, William Gennity, and Laurence Torres, are based in New York.

Because there are costs associated with each transaction for the customer, the security’s price has to go up significantly during the short time it is in an account for even the smallest profit to be made. Instead, eleven customers lost $683K while the NY brokers made $280K and $206K, respectively, in fees and commissions. Some of the investors they bilked had little education and/or were inexperienced investors. In the SEC’s complaint against Gennity and Roveccio, the brokers are accused of recommending investments that required the “frequent buying and selling of securities” despite a lack of reasonable grounds to think that this would make money for their customers.

The two men allegedly engaged in churning in customers’ accounts, unauthorized trading, and hiding material information from them, including that the transaction expenses (markups, commissions, markdowns, fees, postage, and margin interest ) for the investment recommendations would most likely exceed any possible profits.

Securities Cases: SunTrust Settles Improper Mutual Fund Fee Charges for $1.1M, Ex-Morgan Stanley Barred Over Client He Later Married, and Two RIAs Are Barred for Cherry Picking

Published on: September 14, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SEC Charges SunTrust With Collecting Over $1.1M in Excess Mutual Fund Fees

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges accusing SunTrust Investment Services of collecting over $1.1M in unwarranted fees from mutual fund clients. The SunTrust Banks subsidiary will pay an over $1.1M penalty to resolve the regulator’s civil charges.

According to the regulator’s order, SunTrust Investment Services improperly recommended costlier mutual fund share classes to clients when less expensive shares of these funds were available. The SEC says this was a breach of the investment services firm’s fiduciary duty to take actions in the client’s best interests.

FINRA Bars Ex-HSBC Securities Broker Over Alleged $200K Senior Financial Fraud

Published on: August 30, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is barring Jaime R. Rodriguez, an ex-HSBC Securities (HSBC) broker, in the wake of a charge accusing him of bilking an older customer, who is also legally blind, of $200K. HSBC fired Rodriguez in 2014.

Rodriguez is accused of using about $70K of the client’s money in 2012 to buy an apartment that was supposed to be for the customer. However, because the man couldn’t read or see the documents related to the purchase, he did not know that Rodriguez had named himself as the sole beneficial owner.

According to InvestmentNews, Rodriguez met the man in 2010 and began helping him with his errands. Also in 2012, Rodriguez purportedly recommended to the client that they set up a joint account together so that the then-HSBC broker could assist him in paying his bills. The account was opened using about $42K of the client’s money and at one point it held $153K.

Four Ex-Brokers Accused of Fraud that Allegedly Targeted Federal Retirees

Published on: July 31, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against four former brokers for allegedly persuading federal employees to roll over holdings from federal retirement accounts into variable annuity products that charged higher fees. Their targets were Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) participants. The plan is administered by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which is an independent government agency.

According to the regulator’s broker fraud case, then-brokers Jonathan Cooke, Christopher Laws, Brandon Long, and Danny Hoode promoted the VA products under the Federal Employee Benefits Counselors because they wanted the high commissions. Their alleged victims were federal employees who were 59 ½ years of age and older and with TSP account holdings that could be moved over into variable annuities, tax-free, in certain plans at annuity carriers.

Ex-Brokers Made High Commissions From the Alleged Elder Investor Fraud

Securities Fraud: Massachusetts Hedge Fund Manager Sentenced to 30 Months for Bilking Investors, Northeast Securities Ordered to Pay Customer $1.8M, and Ex-State Street Executive Pleads Guilty in Scheme Involving Secret Commissions

Published on: July 12, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

After Pleading Guilty, Massachusetts Money Manager Must Repay Investors
Stephen Eubanks is sentenced to 30 months behind bars for bilking investors of $437K. He also must pay restitution in that amount to his more than 20 victims.

Eubanks presented himself as a hedge fund manager at Eubiquity Capital, which he founded. He raised over $700K from investors and claimed that he was running a hedge fund that had ties with UBS (UBS), TD Ameritrade (AMTD), Fidelity, and Goldman Sachs (GS).

While Eubanks invested some of the clients’ funds for them he also spent a healthy amount of their money on his own spending. Eubanks also is accused of on occasion operating his fund as if it were a Ponzi scam.

FINRA Promises To Take Tougher Stance With Rogue Brokers

Published on: June 14, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

The Financial Industry Regulatory has barred Lawrence M. Thomas, an ex-Woodbury Financial Services Inc. broker who was under investigation for unauthorized product sales. Thomas was previously registered with Essex Securities.

Last year, Thomas was fined $5K and suspended for three months after he consented to findings that he told an assistant to forge three customers’ signatures on about 10 documents. FINRA had been looking into whether Thomas recommended to Woodbury clients that they purchase an unauthorized product. The self-regulatory organization barred him after he failed to testify in FINRA’s investigation into the claims.

In an unrelated FINRA case, the SRO has filed charges against Kim Dee Isaacson, an ex-Morgan Stanley (MS) broker, for allegedly misleading a client about the size of his account, engaging in unauthorized trading, and attempting to resolve these issues directly with the client instead of along with the firm. According to FINRA, Isaacson told the client that the account was valued at $3.1M even though that was false.

FINRA Claims That It Can’t Stop Firms From Hiring High-Risk Brokers

Published on: June 12, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

In interviews with Reuters, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority admitted that even though investors are harmed when broker-dealers hire brokers with checkered histories, there is not much that the regulator can do to stop this practice because it is not illegal. This is undoubtedly causing even more investors to suffer losses as some of these high-risk brokers continue to engage in more misconduct or other violations at their new places of work.

For example, reports the news agency, since 2007 broker Mike McMahon and brokerage firms where he has worked, including National Securities Corporation, have shelled out $1.35M to resolve 10 client cases in which he was purportedly involved. McMahon is currently contending with another four broker fraud cases that were brought by other ex-clients.

One of the reasons the complaints keep coming is because he has been able to move from one firm to another even with the cases that have already been brought against him. Unfortunately, McMahon is not the only one.

Securities Fraud Cases: Ponzi Scam Operator Sentenced to Prison, Fund Manager Pleads Guilty, Ex-Options Trading Instructor Allegedly Misappropriated Investor Funds, & $1.7M Financial Scam Leads to 10-Years Behind Bars

Published on: May 26, 2017 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SEC Charges Man Accused of Running $10M Ponzi Scam
Mark Anderson Jones, whom the US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged with fraud, has been sentenced to 70 months in prison in a parallel criminal case. Jones pleaded guilty to running a $10M Ponzi scam.

According to the SEC, Jones solicited investors in a number of US states, as well as in Washington DC. He did this by issuing promissory notes, as well as providing personal guarantees to clients that were willing to invest in The Bridge Fund, which supposedly lent money to Jamaican businesses that were waiting to get commercial bank loans.

However, rather than investing their money the way he said he would, Jones used a portion of investors’ cash to pay his own expenses as well as make Ponzi payments.