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SEC Hits UDF With Wells Notice

The Frankowski Firm, LLC currently represents multiple investors who have invested in troubled United Development Funding REITs. Earlier this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a Wells notice against the Texas company, which indicates that the SEC has made a preliminary determination to potentially recommend an enforcement action against it. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ stock market has delisted UDF IV shares. The UDF REITs have been in trouble for nearly a year. A hedge fund with a short position in UDF IV shares last December claimed the company had been operating as a Ponzi scheme for years. The FBI raided the REIT's headquarters in a suburb of Dallas in February. At that time, the NASDAQ stopped the trading of UDF IV shares at $3.20, which was down 81% over the previous year. During the last few months, UDF IV has publicly claimed that it was working to file its 2015 annual reports and its last three quarterly reports with the SEC [...]

By |October 19th, 2016|Fraud, Press Releases & News, SEC|
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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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Sam Wyly Settles Federal Fraud Charges for $198.1M

Sam Wyly, an ex-Texas billionaire who has declared bankruptcy, will pay $198.1 million to settle federal securities regulator claims accusing him of securities fraud to hide trades in companies that were under his control through the use of offshore trusts. A federal bankruptcy judge in Dallas and the SEC commissioners must still approve the settlement.  According to the agreement, Wyly and his family must take action so that offshore trusts in the Isle of Man will issue payments to satisfy the judgment that the SEC obtained last year against him and his now-deceased brother Charles Wyly.  In the meanwhile, the regulator will make sure that the 81-year-old gets a credit against his almost $181M million of federal income tax liabilities.    The SEC, in its securities fraud lawsuit that it brought in 2010, accused the brothers of making $553 million in undisclosed profits when it traded in companies under their control by using the offshores trusts. Both said they did nothing wrong. [...]

By |October 13th, 2016|Fraud, Press Releases & News, SEC|
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