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Mark Tauzin Suspended For Unsuitable Trading

FINRA suspended former LPL Financial broker Mark Tauzin for engaging in unsuitable short-term trading of unit investment trusts as well as maintaining blank, signed forms in customer files. He was suspended for eight months from any FINRA registered broker-dealer, fined $20,000 and required to pay $205,000 plus interest to 14 sets of clients. That sum represents the commissions he generated from November 2012 to November 2014 by buying and selling UITs, according to the settlement. Over the two year period, while he was registered with LPL, Tauzin recommended the purchase of UITs, which typically carry significant upfront charges, and the subsequent sales of those products within a year of purchase, according to FINRA. The UITs Tauzin recommended had maturity dates of 24 months or longer and carried initial sales charges ranging from 2.5% to 3.95%. “Within the accounts of these 14 households, Tauzin effected 215 UIT transactions that were sold within a 12-month time period,” according to FINRA. [...]

By |October 21st, 2016|Broker Check, FINRA, Press Releases & News|
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PIABA Issues Report On BrokerCheck’s Shortcomings

 PIABA, the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, issued a new report stating that FINRA's BrokerCheck, the primary resource the public uses to learn about brokers and their firms, fails to include vital information, including the reasons a financial professional's employment was terminated and other details investors should have before deciding whether to invest with them. The PIABA report says that information about bankruptcies, tax liens, and scores on relevant industry examinations also should be included on the system. The PIABA report additionally states that after the group published a March 2014 report that first criticized FINRA's broker information repository, the self-regulatory organization “made things worse” by spending millions to fund an advertising campaign to encourage investors to use the system. “FINRA cannot be allowed to continue to hype a broken system it knows is of limited utility,” said Hugh D. Berkson, president of PIABA and a report co-author. FINRA responded to the report, saying it is always looking for ways [...]

By |October 20th, 2016|Broker Check, FINRA|
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Debra Ferrara Suspended For Fraudulent Wire Transfer

Debra Ferrara, a former client administrator at Morgan Stanley, was fined and suspended by FINRA for fraudulently transferring a total of $108,680 out of a client's account to third party bank accounts and for falsifying records. Morgan Stanley terminated Ferrara in December 2011 for falsifying information recorded in its books. Ferrara agreed to be fined $5,000 and suspended from the securities industry for sixty days. Ferarra had provided administrative support to a financial adviser who was responsible for the targeted client's account. In November 2011, Ferrara received an email instruction forwarded by the adviser to process a wire transfer from a client's account to a third party bank account. They did not realize that the instruction was sent by an impostor who hacked the email account of the client's authorized person. According to Morgan Stanley's rules, Ferrara should have contacted the authorized person to verbally confirm the transfer instruction and record the event on the firm's internal records, but she [...]

By |October 18th, 2016|Broker Check, FINRA, Fraud, Press Releases & News|
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Jeffrey Howell Barred From Securities Industry

Jeffrey Howell, formerly a broker with UBS Group AG's wealth management unit was barred from the securities industry for giving a client faux weekly account statements over a period of six years, according to FINRA.Howell sent these reports from September 2008 to November 2014, overvaluing the account by as much as $3 million, according to a settlement notice accepted by FINRA. He is believed to have changed three UBS account statements to conceal the inaccuracies in the reports.Jeffrey Howell created and sent the client over 300 weekly "Stock Tracking Reports" that were supposed to reflect the value of the customer's portfolio but actually misstated it in amounts ranging from $289,000 in September 2008 to about $3 million in November 2014, according to the notice. Howell used his personal e-mail account to send some of the false reports, leaving UBS with inaccurate books and records, FINRA said.According to FINRA's BrokerCheck, UBS terminated Howell in 2014, and he is no longer registered with [...]

By |October 14th, 2016|Broker Check, FINRA, Fraud, Press Releases & News|
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