Bugatti-Driving 26-Year-Old Linked To Penny-Stock Website
For a number of years, many had wondered who operated one of the biggest penny-stock websites, but now a lawsuit has linked John Babikian, a Bugatti-driving 26-year-old, to the site. Babikian used AwesomePennyStocks, an email list, to boast stock in a coal company while selling his own shares, according to the SEC. Over five years, […]
Bank Of America To Pay $9.3 Billion To Settle Mortgage Bond Claims
Bank of America has agreed to pay $9.3 billion to settle claims with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after selling the institutions faulty mortgage bonds. The Federal Housing Finance Agency alleged that Bank of America misrepresented the worth of loans underlying residential mortgage-backed securities bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2005 to 2007. […]
Arbitrator Lies About Being A Lawyer, Booted
James H. Frank of Santa Barbara, California may have jeopardized the outcomes of almost forty securities arbitrations, some of which date back to more than fifteen years. According to a FINRA spokeswoman, Frank misrepresented himself as being a lawyer and a member of the bar in a number of states. FINRA removed Frank from its […]
How To File A Claim With FINRA
In order to begin the arbitration process, a party should file a Statement of Claim with FINRA. This party is called the “claimant.” The party against whom the Statement is filed is called the respondent. The Statement of Claim itself should be thorough and include as many details as possible relating to the claim. This […]
FINRA Warns Against Leveraged ETFs
Several brokerage firms have stopped selling leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. warned brokers that they “typically are unsuitable for retail investors” who hold them longer than a day . Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are funds that track indexes like the NASDAQ-100 Index, S&P 500, Dow Jones, etc. When […]
What Is FINRA?
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) is a self-regulatory organization, a non-governmental organization that performs financial regulation of member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA’s mission is to protect investors by making sure the United States securities industry operates fairly and honestly . FINRA operates the largest arbitration forum in the United States for […]
Jefferies Agrees To Pay $25 million For Mortgage Backed SecuritiesViolations
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged global investment bank and brokerage firm Jefferies LLC with failing to supervise its employees who sold mortgage-backed securities desk and were in turn lying to customers about pricing . An SEC investigation found that Jefferies representatives including Jesse Litvak, who the SEC charged with securities fraud last year, […]
JP Morgan Settles Suit Over Toxic Mortgage Backed Securities for $400 Million
US banking giant JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay USD 400 million in a settlement for litigation filed by Syncora Guarantee Inc. over mortgage-backed securities . Syncora said it would drop the rest of its cases against the banking giant as a result of the $400 million settlement The securities sold to Syncora came from […]
RBS reaches $275 million mortgage-backed securities settlement
On Feb. 19, RBS officials announced that the company had reached a $275 million settlement with the U.S. government to resolve allegations of misleading investors in mortgage-backed securities. The settlement is the third-largest settlement in the U.S. class action against banks packaged and sold mortgage securities . This case was originally filed in 2008 by […]
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission Investigating Managed Future Funds
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating the sky high fees that are charged to investors in managed futures funds. This comes after a December 19, 2013 letter that the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging sent to the CFTC asking them to work with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on investigating the fees […]