FINRA January 2017 Disciplinary Actions

FINRA takes disciplinary actions against firms and individuals for violations of FINRA rules; federal securities laws, rules, and regulations; and the rules of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. Below are a number of penalties announced by the regulator in January 2017. If you have been a victim of any of the below behavior, you may have legal recourse. Please contact attorney Richard Frankowski today at 888-741-7503 for a free consultation. FINRA censured and fined VFG Securities, Inc. of Culver City, California $50,000, $10,000 of which is joint and several with Jason Bryce Vanclef. According to FINRA, the firm and Vanclef distributed and listed for sale online Vanclef's self-published book, which contained, false, exaggerated, unwarranted, or misleading statements, and omitted material facts or qualifications where the omissions caused the communication to be misleading. The findings also state they provided customers with misleading personalized recommendation spreadsheets. Advisors Clearing Network, Inc. of Pasadena, California was also censured and fined $50,000. FINRA found that it [...]

Leavitt Sanders’ Clients May Have Legal Rights

The Frankowski Firm, LLC has filed several lawsuits alleging that Leavitt Sanders and the entities he traded through committed investment fraud. These entities include Leavitt Financial Group, Inc., Sanders Yearian Advisory Group, Inc., Triad Advisors, Inc., IFC Holdings, Inc. d/b/a INVEST Financial Corporation, and Capital Asset Advisory Services, LLC. The investors allegedly defrauded, many of whom are of retirement age, depended on the funds they entrusted to Sanders and allege that he and the associated firms failed to act in accordance with the investors’ objectives and with the applicable standard of care. The investors, having suffered catastrophic losses to their life savings, also allege that Sanders breached his duties and engaged in wrongful conduct. According to the investors, Sanders made trades and engaged in other investment activities without their authority. Furthermore, he failed to properly keep the investors informed about the trading within their accounts. Specifically, he engaged in “block purchasing,” which is the purchase of numerous shares of common [...]

Banker Who Faked His Own Death Barred From Securities Industry

The SEC has barred from the securities industry Aubrey Lee Price, an imprisoned former Georgia investment adviser who pleaded guilty in 2014 to a massive fraud that helped bring down his troubled bank and cheated his clients out of millions of dollars. The penalty is inconsequential as Price is expected to spend three decades in federal prison. He submitted his offer to be banned from the industry in August, and the SEC accepted it this week, thus resolving the SEC's civil action against him. Price had disappeared in 2012, having written suicide notes confessing to defrauding his clients and Montgomery Bank & Trust. In some of the notes, he detailed his intent to jump from a ferry in Florida. A Florida judge declared Price legally dead roughly six months after he disappeared, but federal authorities never believed that he was actually dead. On New Year's Eve 2013, Price was captured in a routine traffic stop on I-95 near Brunswick, Georgia. [...]

Hedge Fund Manager Acquitted Of Inside Trading

A federal jury in Atlanta acquitted Steven E. Slawson, a New Jersey hedge fund manager, who had allegedly made illicit profits from sneak previews of financial results of Carter's Inc., an Atlanta-based clothier, before they were released. He was acquitted of thirty-four counts of insider trading. “This case was another example of the government overreaching in insider trading cases," said Slawson's attorney. "My client was at the end of a chain of information, and he had no idea that other people in the beginning of the chain were stealing confidential information. Luckily, the jury understood this and acquitted him of all counts, avoiding a wrongful conviction of an innocent man.” Prosecutors from Atlanta's U.S. Attorney's Office had accused Slawson of using information on Carter's financial results in trades for more than five years. Two ex-Carter's executives were convicted of insider trading and sentenced to terms in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in related cases. If [...]