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 [...]

Wedbush Fined For Trading Blunders

A number of trading and clearing blunders by Wedbush Securities Inc. pertaining to a customer's redemption activity and trading of leveraged ETFs has led FINRA and the NASDAQ Stock Market to fine the firm $675,000. Wedbush acted as the clearing firm for its broker-dealer customer, Scout Trading, and as an authorized participant of varying exchange-traded funds. This allowed the firm to send redemption/creation orders on Scout Trading's behalf and on the behalf of its other clients, according to FINRA. Between January 2010 and March 2012, Scout Trading was insufficiently long in the ETF shares comprising the redemption orders. Throughout the review period, Scout Trading sent at least 255 naked redemption orders through Wedbush in eleven ETFs, equaling more than 295 million shares.  This naked redemption activity, together with short selling of ETFs on the secondary market by Scout Trading, ended up with numerous substantial failures to deliver by Wedbush. According to the SEC, failures to deliver may [...]

Texas REIT Subpoenaed Following FBI Raid

Management of real estate investment trust United Development Funding IV, a hedge fund accused of operating as a Ponzi scheme, has been subpoenaed to turn over company documents to a grand jury. Last week, the FBI raided the REIT's offices outside of Dallas. While performing their search, “law enforcement officers served executive officers of the trust and certain other employees of the trust's advisor and its affiliates” with the subpoenas for company documents, according to a filing with the SEC. UDF IV share prices plummeted after the news of the FBI raid last week. Shares fell nearly 55% during trading on Thursday to $3.20 per share. That day, NASDAQ told UDF it was suspending trading of the Texas REIT. In the SEC filing, the company said that it did not “believe that it, its officers or the employees of its advisor and its affiliates have violated any laws or regulations, and the trust intends to cooperate fully with the government's investigation.” [...]

Texas REIT Plummets Following Ponzi Allegations

Stock in United Development Funding IV has gone into a free fall following a report published on an investor website that alleged the real estate investment trust has operated for years like a Ponzi scheme. Harvest Exchange, an online professional network for investors, published an anonymous post about UDF called "A Texas-Sized Scheme: Exposing the Darkest Corner of the REIT Business, United Development Funding," which currently controls $1.3 billion of assets in various REITS, including UDF IV. Based out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, UDF IV was a nontraded REIT that listed on the NASDAQ in June 2014. It was sold to investors from 2009 to 2013 at $20 per share. “The UDF umbrella exhibits characteristics emblematic of a Ponzi scheme,” according to the Harvest posting. Those characteristics include new capital used to fund distributions to existing investors and subsequent UDF companies providing significant liquidity to earlier vintage UDF companies, allowing them to pay earlier investors. Once the funding of [...]