Investment Fraud Lawyer Blog

The jobs crisis is starting to hit Wall Street banks and brokerage firms, according to a series of Wall Street Journal articles (“Wall Street Wielding the Ax,” by Aaron Lucchetti and Liz Rappaport; “Credit Suisse Set to Ax 600 Jobs,” by Katharina Bart; and “Here’s Why Wall Street Is Cutting Jobs”). A regulatory crackdown on high-risk proprietary trading is reportedly to blame. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “[a] longtime secret sauce on Wall Street – derivatives trading – is drying up.” In addition, less trading by retail and hedge fund clients means less fees and commissions are coming in.

Continue reading " Securities Industry Employment Disputes on the Increase as Wall Street Cuts Jobs " »

The Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing of the selling of real estate investment trusts that are private placements, that is, are not traded on an exchange, according to an Wall Street Journal article by Anton Troianovski and Craig Karmin entitled “Nontraded REITs Are Put on Notice by SEC.” The SEC is inquiring into the operations and disclosures of nontraded REITs, according to the article.

Continue reading " SEC To Investigate Nontraded REITs " »

Bank of America and its Countrywide unit have reportedly agreed to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims made by a group that includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, and Blackrock Financial Management, who have been pressing the bank for a year to honor its obligation to buyback $47 billion in defaulted mortgages that the group purchased as mortgage-backed bonds from Countrywide. Bank of America bought Countrywide in 2008 for $4 billion.

Continue reading " Mortgage-Backed Securities Settlement Costs Bank of America $8.5 Billion " »

In her recent New York Times article entitled “Findings That May Get Lost,” Gretchen Morgenson writes about a “disturbing paradox” presented by the following scenario: Investors who lost over $1 billion in toxic RMK bond funds may not benefit from the recent settlement with regulators that Morgan Keegan paid $200 million to obtain, despite findings that Morgan Keegan and James Kelsoe misled and defrauded investors in those funds, because Morgan Keegan’s lawyers will argue that the regulatory findings are irrelevant in arbitration proceedings filed by injured investors, and, incredibly, some arbitrators will agree not to consider those findings, despite court decisions holding that such findings must be admitted in evidence.

Continue reading " Morgan Keegan Toxic Bond Fund Cases Provide Disturbing Examples of How Industry Arbitration Fails Investors " »

“Nation Goes on Its Merry Way to Ruin” (WSJ) by Pam Luecke, the Donald W. Reynolds professor of business journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., provides her take on Gretchen Morgenson’s and Joshua Rosner’s “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led To Economic Armegeddon.”

Continue reading " Economic Armegeddon Ahead? " »

Exchange traded funds are one of the fastest-growing and most popular investments on Wall Street. They are mutual fund-like baskets of securities that trade like stocks, but have hidden risks that could harm investors, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) cautioned recently, according to Matt Krantz’s USA Today article entitled “Exotic ETFs can burn the unwary.”

Continue reading " Regulators Reiterate Warnings Regarding Exotic Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) " »

Describing JP Morgan Chase as an “active enabler” that “knew” about the fraud being perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, the Madoff bankruptcy trustee has amended his complaint against JPMorgan Chase to increase the amount of compensatory damages claimed from $5.4 billion to $19 billion, an amount that is based on the trustee’s latest estimate of principal lost by all Madoff investors by the time the Ponzi scheme collapsed in December 2008, according to Linda Sandler’s Bloomberg article entitled against JP Morgan to “JPMorgan Hit With $19 Billion Damages Claim by Madoff Trustee.” The suit to recover assets to be distributed to defrauded Madoff investors alleges that JP Morgan had “actual knowledge” of the Madoff ponzi scheme but failed to take any action to stop the fraud.

Continue reading " Trustee Alleges JP Morgan 'Knew' of Madoff Fraud " »

Why are stock analysts so bullish? Why are only 3% of analysts recommending selling S&P 500 stocks, despite a near-doubling of stock prices over the past two years, the U.S. and European debt crises, and a sick economy that does not seem to be getting well? According to Bernard Condon’s MSNBC.com article (“Why Wall Street is so relentlessly optimistic”), the answer is: it is the ostrich syndrome. “What's the difference between an ostrich and a Wall Street analyst? An ostrich occasionally takes its head out of the sand.”

Continue reading " Do Wall Street Analysts Have Their Heads in the Sand? " »

The ratio of broker-dealer closings to openings is almost 2:1, and this is a trend, especially for smaller broker-dealers, according to Bruce Kelly’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Ranks of B-Ds likely to shrink by 540 firms in three years.” 336 B-Ds withdrew their registration last year, compared to 190 new openings. Currently, there are 4,540 FINRA-registered broker-dealers, but that number could drop to 4,000 over the next few years, according to a research firm named The Compliance Department Inc., which predicts that the industry could see an 11% net loss of brokerage firms by 2014.

Continue reading " The Profile of the Securities Industry is Changing " »

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to approve a rule requiring certain private (hedge) fund advisers to register with and provide certain information to the SEC by March 30, finally subjecting them to some regulatory scrutiny. The vote was 3 to 2 with Republican commissioners Kathleen Casey and Troy Paredes voting “no.” The hedge funds will be required to disclose data regarding their investors, employees, managed assets, potential conflicts of interest, and their activities outside of fund advising, which will be made public.

Continue reading " New Hedge Fund Regulations Implemented But For How Long? " »

Morgan Keegan & Company and Morgan Asset Management have agreed to pay $200 million to settle fraud charges related to proprietary bond mutual funds that were both mispriced and loaded with risky subprime mortgage-backed securities. Approximately 39,000 investors lost $1.5 billion in the RMK bond funds (later renamed Helios) that were the focus of the charges.

Continue reading " Investors to Receive Some Compensation from Morgan Keegan Regulatory Settlements " »

Morgan Keegan & Company and Morgan Asset Management have agreed to pay $200 million to settle fraud charges related to bond funds that invested in subprime mortgage-backed securities. The charges were filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, state regulators from Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Former RMK bond fund portfolio manager James C. Kelsoe Jr., and comptroller Joseph Thompson Weller also agreed to pay penalties for their misconduct. Kelsoe is now barred from the securities industry.

Continue reading " Morgan Keegan Fined $200 Million for Fraud Involving Toxic Bond Funds " »

Investors in non-traded real estate investment trusts known as Apple REITs, which invest in hotels, have filed a class action suit against David Lerner Associates (“DLA”) to recover alleged losses of more than $6.8 billion, claiming the firm acted negligently in sales and underwriting of the REIT, according to an InvestmentNews article entitled “David Lerner Associates sued over $6.8B in REITs.”

Continue reading " Investors Sue to Recover Losses in Apple REITs " »

As Greece’s prime minister faces a confidence vote, amid protests (some would say riots) in the streets against austerity measures that are a precondition to obtaining another wave of bailout money needed to stave off default, a recent article called “The euro crisis: A second wave,” published in The Economist magazine, says that the bail out strategy for Greece and other peripheral economies is not working, that the whole European integration could unravel, and that the repercussions of that would threaten the United States and global economy.

Continue reading " Greek Crisis Warrants Close Scrutiny " »

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle SEC charges that it misled investors in a complex “built to fail” mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet.

Continue reading " The Real Truth Regarding Some of Wall Street's Subprime Shenanigans Begins to Emerge " »

Best-selling “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led To Economic Armegeddon,” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, “calls out greedy guys behind mortgage mess,” according to a USA Today book review by Kathryn Caravan. See also “Home Truths,” by James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal. Both reviews provide examples of how the book peels back layer after layer of a bad onion to reveal how a nice-sounding idea (home ownership for all) turned into a house of cards that was doomed to collapse, after being propped up by private greed and public corruption.

Continue reading " The Subprime Mortgage Mess: How the American Dream Turned into a Nightmare " »

The National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”) has filed suit against J.P. Morgan Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland seeking to recover more than $800 million in failed credit unions’ losses in residential mortgage-backed securities, and expects to file additional lawsuits against five to ten other Wall Street firms to recover billions of dollars in additional losses, according to a Wall Street Journal article by Ruth Simon and Liz Rappaport entitled “NCUA Sues J.P. Morgan, RBS Over Mortgage Bonds.”

Continue reading " Credit Union Administration Sues Wall Street Firms to Recover Investment Losses " »

Investors in today’s markets, particularly seniors, are caught between extremely low interest rates and the risk of pursuing higher returns they want or need. Brokerage firms are capitalizing on that dilemma by selling structured products as a way to earn above-market returns purportedly without market risk. But as Robert Powel, editor of MarketWatch’s Retirement Weekly, points out in his article entitled “Investors warned about risky structured products,” structured product sellers routinely overstate the potential upside and understate the potential downside of these investments. The net result has been the rampant destruction of investors’ wealth.

Continue reading " What are Structured Products and Why are They so Dangerous? " »

Renown Yale economist Robert Shiller recently issued two warnings that investors should carefully evaluate. Shiller is well known for predicting both the recent housing crash that began in 2006 and the tech crash in 2000-2001. While investors should always be skeptical of predictions, Shiller’s track record is such that his predictions are worthy of consideration. At present, he predicts that stocks are overpriced by approximately 40% and that housing prices could fall an additional ten to twenty-five percent over the next several years.

Continue reading " Expert Issues Warnings Regarding the Stock and Housing Markets " »

The Securities and Exchange Commission is broadening its investigation into the world of “built to fail” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) by looking at Merrill Lynch’s CDO business, according to articles by Marian Wang of Pro Publica (“Merrill Lynch Investigated for CDO Deal Involving Magnetar”) and Kara Scannell of the Financial Times (“SEC Probes $1.5 Billion Merrill CDO Sale). The news is apparently “sending chills” through other banks that put together deals with Magnetar, such as Citigroup, UBS, Wachovia (now Wells Fargo) and Deutsche Bank, according to John Carney of CNBC (“Who Else Did Magnetar Deals?”).

Continue reading " Magnetar CDO Deals Haunt Wall Street Firms " »

In a recent article entitled “Tough Times Ahead for Bond ETFs,” Cambridge University grad Paul Amery, editor of www.indexuniverse.eu, which provides analysis and comment on Europe's exchange-traded fund and index industry, expressed concerns that the bond exchange-traded fund boom may be past its peak, and that this does not bode well for the overall U.S. financial markets.

Continue reading " Are Bond ETFs Facing a Hard Landing? " »

Massachusetts may join California, Virginia and Florida in suing Bank of New York Mellon Corp. for allegedly overcharging the state's pensioners for foreign exchange trades, according to Carrick Mollenkamp’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “New Front Opens in Massachusetts for Forex Dispute.” Federal agencies are reportedly investigating.

Continue reading " Massachusetts Claims it was Overcharged for Forex Trades " »

UBS and other Wall Street banks have found a way to profit from the Madoff ponzi scheme, swooping in like vultures to snap up claims from defrauded investors at a fraction of their nominal value, according to Michael Rothfield’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Madoff Claims Lure Banks.” At the same time, UBS is being sued by the Madoff bankruptcy trustee for allegedly ignoring warning signs of the fraud while receiving fees as a custodian and sponsor of funds that invested with Madoff. By defending this suit, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland (another bank being sued by the Madoff trustee in connection with the fraud) are effectively “fighting off victims of the fraud, while at the same time seeking to profit from payouts based on other claims.”

Continue reading " Wall Street Seeks to Profit from the Madoff Fraud " »

Wall Street’s pay practices place financial advisors’ personal interests in direct conflict with the interest of their clients. This is one of many reasons that Wall Street firms oppose the adoption of a fiduciary standard that would require financial advisors to put their clients interest first.

Continue reading " How Wall Street's Pay Practices Create Conflicts with Investors " »

The drum beat goes on for broker-dealer closings, as MCL Financial Group Inc. of Santa Ana, California, another small broker-dealer that sold a lot of illiquid alternative investments, has gone the way of QA3 Financial Corp., Jesup & Lamont Securities Corp., GunnAllen Financial Inc., Securities Network LLC, Omni Brokerage Inc., and WFP Securities, according to the latest in Bruce Kelly’s series on the subject for InvestmentNews, “MCL Financial: Another big seller of alternative investments goes under.” These firms folded under the legal costs of their failure to perform proper due diligence on the private placements.

Continue reading " Private Offerings Scuttle Another Brokerage Firm " »

In one of the largest dollar awards to date in a Lehman note case against UBS Financial Services Inc., a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel “walloped” UBS, ordering it to pay former Philadelphia 76ers President Pat Croce more than $2 million for losses in so-called “100% Principal Protected” Lehman notes that were sold to him weeks before Lehman’s September 15, 2008 bankruptcy filing. See Samuel Howard’s Law360 article entitled “UBS Told To Pay 76ers Prez $2M Over Lehman Notes.”

Continue reading " Improper Sales of '100% Principal Protected Notes' Wallop UBS Again " »

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney said that it may terminate more brokers than had been previously announced, as its cost slashing efforts continue, according to Andrew Osterland’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Reps face belt-tightening at MSSB.” The reasons given for the reduction in force are that the firm is less than half as profitable as expected, and the pace of integration of the Smith Barney retail business is not what management and analysts had hoped it would be. The previous target was 17,500 advisors. The firm terminated 300 trainees and low-producing advisors in the second quarter, after having closed 19 retail locations in the first quarter.

Continue reading " Employment Disputes Ahead for Morgan Stanley? " »

During a recent appearance on CNBC, Meredith Whitney repeated her warning about the municipals market, but downplayed the timing of the wave of defaults she sees coming, according to a Wall Street Journal blog entitled “Meredith Whitney Defends Self on CNBC, Warns of Another Big Downdraft in Housing.” She was pressed about her earlier prediction about hundreds of billions of dollars in muni defaults, and responded that the timing was irrelevant.

Continue reading " Whitney Continues to Predict Huge Problems in the Municipal and Housing Markets " »

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the decrease in U.S. equities trading volume as well as the decrease in stock prices are hitting Wall Street’s equity trading desks hard. The decreases are causing serious concerns among traders who anticipate layoffs later this year if the situation does not improve.

Continue reading " Employment Related Disputes Expected to Rise on Wall Street " »

It is not a surprise that a major threat to the US economy is the country’s rapidly growing debt. However, it’s not just the national debt that is a problem. Private debt owed by individual households is also spiraling. Household debt has become such a prominent problem, it deserves as much, if not more, media attention than government debt. The pressures of household debt have caused some economists to suggest that the US economy is emulating that of Japan of the 1990s. Japan suffered a similar “real estate bust,” affecting the economy for years, and the nineties became known as the “Lost Decade” in Japan. The US seems to be following a similar path.

Continue reading " Household Debt Threatens Economic Recovery " »

Retail investors in structured products that were sold as safe and secure investments have lost at least $113 billion, according to a report by the nonpartisan policy center Demos and The Nation Institute. "In my three decades of Wall Street experience, I have not seen any other product as absurdly destructive as retail investments linked to structured products," securities arbitration consultant Louis Straney wrote in the report.

Continue reading " Experts Conclude that Structured Products are 'Absurdly Destructive' " »

Immediately before its bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman Brothers conjured up a way to pick up extra cash that apparently not even the experts at JPMorgan figured out until it was too late. Bob Ivry alerted the public to the scam in an article in Bloomberg Markets magazine after an extensive investigation by Bloomberg News uncovered the following details of exactly what happened.

Continue reading " Even the Most Sophisticated Investors can be Defrauded " »

Recent uprisings in the Middle East, rising crime statistics, extremist groups terrorizing the world, and gang membership at all time highs…just a product of a bad economy? Are the police not doing their job or could global warming be heating things up? All these factors contribute in some measure but they are all temporary problems that can be resolved. Look below the surface at the age of those involved, the sector of the population with the most time on their hands and the most energy. The underlying problem is unemployment among 16 to 24 year olds.

Continue reading " Are Unemployment Rates Among Young People Reaching Crisis Levels? " »

Carolyn Cui’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Tripped Up by the Margin” makes the point that increasing margin requirements, a step sometimes taken by exchanges to reduce market volatility, can actually increase downward volatility as a result of ensuing forced liquidations.

Continue reading " Fluctuating Margin Requirements Impact the Volatility of Commodities " »

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) continue to warn that the so-called “principal protection” feature of structured notes is misleading, according to an InvestmentNews article by Liz Skinner entitled “Principal-protected notes don’t always protect principal, regulators warn.”

Continue reading " When 'Principal Protected' Doesn't Really Mean an Investor's Principal is Protected " »

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA’s) 2009 prohibition of broker-dealers using information that is more than 18 months old to estimate the value of a nontraded REIT is causing problems for the firms that are trying to abide by it, and is raising a basic question that is hard to answer – what are these REITS really worth? See Bruce Kelly’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Re-pricing nontraded REITs: A thorny issue for broker-dealers.” As noted in the article, nontraded REITS are on FINRA’s radar screen.

Continue reading " False Valuations Plague Nontraded REITs " »

The securities regulator for Illinois has revoked the licenses of two investment adviser representatives, who are supposed to be fiduciaries, for recommending that elderly clients partially liquidate variable annuities in order to purchase equity index annuities, so that the reps could receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions, according to Darla Mercado’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Illinois securities cops revoke licenses of reps for annuity sales.”

Continue reading " Annuity Products Used to Scam Senior Citizens " »

A study by Cerulli Management shows that more investors would rather pay commissions for financial advice than a fee based on a percentage assets under management, according to articles by Elizabeth Ody (Bloomberg.com - “Investors Prefer Commissions to Account Fees, Study Says”) and InvestmentNews (“Fees vs. commission: No doubt which investors prefer”).

Continue reading " Study Indicates That Investors Prefer to Pay Commisions Instead of Account Fees " »

The dust recently settled on another Ponzi scheme. This time the damage was done in Florida, and involved a man who lied to investors about his so-called grocery business. Neil Shapiro was sentenced to twenty years in prison after pleading guilty to securities fraud and money laundering; he was also ordered to pay $82 million in restitution to defrauded investors but they are unlikely to ever see that money. Shapiro raised $930 million through his company, Capitol Investments USA Inc. Shapiro used approximately $770 million to pay back to investors but blew the rest.

Continue reading " Florida Man Guilty of Running a Ponzi Scheme " »

Defense-minded institutions that have long remained on the sidelines when defrauded have finally woken up and are jumping on the plaintiff-recovery bandwagon as they seek to protect themselves against a variety of wrongdoing, according to Vanessa O’Connell’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Company Lawyers Sniff Out Revenue.” These actions include waves of claims against Wall Street financial institutions for fraud in the sale of mortgage backed securities, CDOs and related exotic investments.

Continue reading " Institutional Investors Are Filing Big Claims Against Financial Services Firms " »

The list of independent broker-dealers that sold private offerings and are now out of business, is impressive. The private offerings include Provident Royalties LLC, Medical Holdings Inc., and DBSI Inc. So far, the list of B-Ds that have closed since 2010 includes, but is not limited to, QA3 Financial Corp., Jesup & Lamont Securities Corp., GunnAllen Financial Inc., Securities Network LLC, Omni Brokerage Inc., and most recently, WFP Securities. See series of InvestmentNews articles by Bruce Kelly entitled “Securities Network latest B-D to close its doors,” “Omni present no longer: Brokerage latest B-D to close,” and “WFP Securities bites the dust.”

Continue reading " Reg D and Other Private Offerings are Dangerous for Brokerage Firms as well as their Clients " »

Unlisted, private REITs have been the subject of many abuses and investors face losing their shirts in these investments. The recent demise of Apple REIT investments underscore the dangers. “Owning hotels is anything but a safe, volatility-free way to invest money,” but that is not what broker-dealer David Lerner Associates (“DLA”) told its clients, according to articles by Floyd Norris entitled “Statements Skip Over REIT’s Woes” (NY Times) and in InvestmentNews entitled “Bad tip from Poppy? Finra files complaint against David Lerner Associates.”

Continue reading " Investing in a Nontraded REIT is Buying an Expensive "Pig in a Poke" " »

Richard Ketchum, chairman and chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) admonished broker-dealers that sell risky private placements under the Regulation D exemption to conduct more vigorous due diligence, following up on red flags and “pushing and pulling” for information about the products, according to Bruce Kelly’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Finra’s Ketchum: B-Ds must ‘push and pull’ for Reg D details.”

Continue reading " Reg D and Other Private Placement Offerings are Often Plagued by a Lack of Due Diligence " »

In his Wall Street Journal article “All ‘Commodities’ Aren’t Equal,” Liam Pleven makes the simple point that the performance of broad-based commodities index exchange traded funds may vary significantly because of varying portfolio composition. The fungibility of commodities, or inaccurate advertising, may have led some investors to believe that commodity funds are fungible. They aren’t. The recent sell-off in commodities, particularly oil, drove that point home and “reinforced a painful lesson for some investors,” according to the article.

Continue reading " The Performance of Commodities Exchange Traded Funds Can Vary Significantly " »

Sales of deferred variable annuities have increased since the 2008 market crash as investors wary of the stock market are lured by promises of guaranteed lifetime income and protection against market declines, according to a Bloomberg article by Margaret Collins entitled “Lifetime-Income Promise Fuels Surge in Variable Annuity Sales.” But many financial advisors are not recommending variable annuities to their clients because of the high commissions and other costs and the complexity of the product that requires an actuary to determine whether or not the benefits exceed the costs, according to Lavonne Kuykendall’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Annuity fees a turnoff for clients and advisers.”

Continue reading " Many Questions Arise When Considering an Investment in Variable Annuities " »

Simply stated, senior investors (in fact, all investors) should be very leery of high-risk structured products. Author John Wasik, in conjunction with Demos and The Nation Institute, has published a white paper entitled “How Safe Are Your Savings? How Complex Derivative Products Imperil Seniors’ Retirement Security.” The paper’s focus is on structured products and how they are mis-marketed to seniors, the group most in need of safe and secure income. The paper is reportedly the result of more than a year of research involving interviews with investors, state securities regulators, investors’ attorneys and officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Continue reading " Study: Structured Products Pose Huge Risks to Investors' Portfolios " »

A federal appellate court has denied Credit Suisse’s attempt to overturn a $431 million arbitration award in favor of STMicroelectronics NV in a case involving auction rate securities, according to Ian Thoms’ Law360 article entitled “2nd Circ. Downs Credit Suisse Appeal Of $431M Award.”

Continue reading " Huge Auction Rate Securities Award Against Credit Suisse Upheld " »

The number one rated analyst covering brokerage firms, Brad Hintz, is telling his clients that if Goldman Sachs committed any crimes by misleading its clients about mortgage-backed securities, the firm will will be offered a “slap on the wrist” deal called “deferred prosecution” because it is viewed as “too big to fail,” according to Christine Harper’s Bloomberg article entitled “Goldman Sachs ‘Too Big’ to Face Criminal Prosecution, Hintz Says.” In other words, if a brokerage firm is going to be bad, it pays to be very big and very bad.

Continue reading " Is an Organization "Too Big to Fail" Above the Law? " »

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. admits it did not act in its clients’ best interest in pricing foreign currency trades but says its clients are to blame because they knew or should have known what was going on, according to a Wall Street Journal article by Carrick Mollencamp and Tom McGinty entitled “Inside a Battle Over Forex.”

Continue reading " The Forex Mess Gets Nasty " »

While financial advisers are selling the daylights out of high-yield structured products to investors who complain about low interest rates, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is warning them of the perils of such securities, according to Bruce Kelly’s InvestmentNews article entitled “Ketchum warns that FINRA is focusing on ‘hot’ investment.”

Continue reading " Are FINRA's Threatened Enforcement Actions on Structured Products Fact or Window Dressing? " »

Fraudulent acts make headlines nearly every day. But when fraud occurs amongst friends and family, the violation really “hits home” – perhaps even in the most literal sense. Unfortunately, it is surprising how callous or devious some people can be, even the people trusted the most.

Continue reading " Affinity Fraud Generally Occurs When People Least Expect It " »