Posts belonging to Category Supervisory Failures



SEC Charges Former LPL Advisor With Fraud

 

On May 23, 2013, the SEC charged a former LPL Financial LLC advisor, Blake Richards, with fraud and misappropriating $2 million from at least six clients.  The SEC filed the civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. According to an article by Bruce Kelly in Investment News, “when investors […]

Alternative Investments – Often Tainted by Sales Practice Abuses

 

Investors in search of fixed income have poured money into a variety of alternative investments, including nontraded real estate investment trusts (REITs).  Alternative investments encompass most investments other than traditional stocks and bonds and mutual funds that hold stocks and/or bonds.  There are three basic clusters of problems that investors who are considering these products […]

Alternative Investments Begin to Haunt LPL Financial

 

LPL Financial, the country’s largest independent broker-dealer, is encountering serious problems involving its sales of alternative investments. LPL is also (not coincidentally) one of the country’s largest sellers of alternative investment products. In 2011, LPL sold $758,435,677 of variable annuities (which are considered by most industry observers as being alternative investments) and $110,643,148 of other […]

Insurance Companies Raise Red Flags on Certain Alternative Investments

 

The recent actions of errors and omissions insurance carriers should serve as a major red flag to investors. Many of these carriers are refusing to issue coverage for sales of certain alternative investments. In other words, these carriers have determined that the risk of loss associated with the sale of certain alternative investments is too […]

Page Perry Pursuing Church Bond Loss Claims

 

Page Perry announces that it is investigating instances where church bonds were improperly sold to members of the investing public. Recently the firm has been approached by investors whom sustained devastating losses as a result of investing in church bonds and has found an array of misconduct by the sellers ranging from outright fraud to […]

Church Bonds Have Claimed Many Victims

 

In recent years, church bonds have been hazardous for investors. Many of these investor losses can be attributed to the fact that church bonds were routinely sold by promoters and investment advisers as safe investments. These representations were simply untrue.

Supervisory Failures on the Increase at Broker-Dealers

 

State regulators continue to see an increase in supervisory failures at broker-dealers, according to a review of 236 exams conducted in the first half of this year. In addition to failure to follow written supervisory policies, the top 5 violations involve unsuitability of investments, misleading and/or unmonitored correspondence and e-mail sent to customers, failure to […]