Blog
August 19, 2013
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that New York-based hedge fund adviser Philip A. Falcone and his advisory firm Harbinger Capital Partners have agreed to a settlement in which they must pay more than $18 million and admit wrongdoing. Falcone also agreed to be barred from the securities industry for at least five years. […]
June 17, 2013
The system of mandatory arbitration of disputes between brokerage firms and customers is again in the news. This time the North American Securities Administrators Assocation, Inc. has been lobbying the SEC to act on its authority under Dodd-Frank to end or limit the use of pre-dispute mandatory arbitration agreements included in virtually all customer agreements […]
June 4, 2013
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has fined two firms a total of $2.15 million and ordered the firms to pay more than $3 million in restitution to customers for losses incurred from unsuitable sales of floating-rate bank loan funds. FINRA ordered Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC, as successor for Wells Fargo […]
April 12, 2013
A man accused of cheating California residents out of hundreds of millions of dollars in what prosecutors characterized as one of the largest real estate Ponzi schemes in state history has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. A Shasta County Superior Court judge issued the sentence against Gary Armitage, 62, on Monday, as some of […]
March 28, 2013
In February, the country’s largest independent broker-dealer, with more than 13,000 contractor representatives and advisers, was ordered by Massachusetts to pay up to $2 million in restitution to clients and a fine of $500,000. Ameriprise Financial Inc. and LPL Financial are the two largest sellers of nontraded REITs, accounting for about 20% of the annual […]