Wells Fargo Advisors has repeatedly been caught pushing unsuitable investments on their clients. One would think that after all the scandals that have engulfed the beleaguered bank, senior management would start taking their customers more seriously. Our first post on Wells Fargo selling unsuitable investments was in 2011. It’s now 2021 and we are still […]
JPMorgan Securities Fined for Unsuitable Investments, Misconduct
JP Morgan Securities – Big Doesn’t Mean Better JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States and the 7th largest in the world. With assets of $2.86 trillion, it certainly is big. It also claims to be one of the oldest financial institutions in the country. But that doesn’t mean its brokerage arm […]
Brit Established Cayman Fund AFTER US Court Arrest Warrant
[Originally posted in October 2010, now updated through 2021.] (Editors note: One of the best investigative journalists in the business is David Marchant. This story was first reported by David.) British citizen Sencer Sevket formed a mutual fund in the Cayman Islands after a U.S. federal court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges […]
What Are Clawbacks and How Can They Help Ponzi Scheme Victims?
Until the Bernie Madoff case, the term “clawback” was virtually unknown in the asset recovery world. Now it has become a powerful tool for court appointed receivers and a nightmare for those lucky Ponzi scheme victims who cashed out early or managed to independently recover some of their investment. The Wikipedia definition is quite vague […]
Revictimizing the Victims – "Reloading" Common in Ponzi Schemes
[Original post October 2010, post supplemented and republished April 2020] Recently an unemployed woodsman from Washington state was convicted of nine federal offenses including blowing up his own mailbox (destruction of a mail box is a federal crime.) What was he doing? Trying to convince victims of a Ponzi scheme to give him money in […]
Legal Abuse Syndrome and Foreclosure Fraud
Until a client sent us a clipping today, I had never heard the term “Legal Abuse Syndrome.” If you look in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, you won’t find the term. Yet. The DSM is the official “blue book” used by mental health professionals. Whereas many of the CEOs of major banks […]
SEC Slams Ex LPL Broker for Elder Financial Abuse
A stockbroker who delivers medication to a terminal cancer patient in a snowstorm… sounds like a great guy, right? In most situations it would be wonderful. In this case, the man wearing the hero’s disguise was nothing more than a common thief and villain. Last week the SEC obtained a $1.8 million judgment against former […]
NASAA Takes Aim At REIT Sales
The North American Securities Administrators Association has once again taken aim at REIT sales practices. According to the Wall Street Journal, the group wants to push legislation that would limit the percentage of an individual ‘s net worth that could be invested in nontraded REITs. The REIT concentration limit proposal “would add a uniform concentration […]
Alliance & Nikolai Battoo – “Figment of Criminal Imagination”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged yet another player in the massive Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Nikolai Battoo. Marketed as PIWM, Maven Assurance or Maven Life, the Ponzi scheme is estimated to have raked in over $150 million dollars. Already the principals, Nikolai Battoo and his chief marketer Tracy Sunderlage, have been charged […]
Nikolai Battoo and Tracy Sunderlage – "Sons of Madoff"?
It’s Halloween weekend and kids throughout the country are dressed in costume. (Same for a fair amount of adults in college towns too.) 75 years ago, the public was terrified when the hit movie Son of Frankenstein was released in theaters. Today it takes more than a movie to scare most adults. For this Halloween […]
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