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CFTC Orders Convergent Wealth Advisors Ordered to Pay $800K Securities Fraud Fine
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission says that Convergent Wealth Advisors must pay a civil penalty of $800K related to a commodity pool run by its former CEO David Zier. Zier committed suicide in 2014. That was also the year that a regulatory probe was begun around the private fund ZAM LLC that Zier operated.
Convergent compliance personnel staff were the ones who noticed that there were inconsistencies in some ZAM performance reports and account statements. In its securities case, the CFTC said that from 12/2010 and until Zier’s passing, there were $2.9M in fraudulent solicitations involving the private fund.
According to the CFTC, Zier put out false statements and made fraudulent representations to clients about the pool, which he ran as an outside business activity while working as an agent for the registered investment adviser. Zier purportedly represented ZAM as profitable even though it had sustained significant losses. He also allegedly made up performance data, which he gave to investors, to hide the losses.