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Former Broker, Robert K. Smith, Under Investigation

Robert Keith Smith, formerly a broker with Berthel Fisher, has been accused by more than ten of his clients throughout his career of overconcentrating their accounts in private placement securities, including equipment leasing programs, oil and gas investments, and non-traded real estate investment trusts. Smith started his career in 2000 with American General Securities and was registered with the firm until May 2006. Subsequently, he was associated with ProEquities until June 2010 and with Berthel, Fisher & Company Financial Services until June 2014. Numerous complaints against the same broker regarding the same or similar charges of misconduct is unusual in the brokerage industry. The majority of brokers go their whole careers without having a complaint against them. The number of brokers who have more than two customer complaints against them is remarkably low. Accordingly, having over ten customer complaints against Smith, all of which regard private placement securities, is highly irregular. The kinds of products Smith sold to investors on [...]

By |August 4th, 2015|Broker Check, FINRA, Press Releases & News|
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LPL Financial Fined $11.7M For ‘Widespread Supervisory Failures’

FINRA ordered LPL Financial to pay $11.7 million in fines and restitution for what it called "widespread supervisory failures" pertaining to sales of complex products. According to the regulator authority, from 2007 to April 2015, LPL failed to adequately supervise sales of particular investments, such as exchange-traded funds, variable annuities, and nontraded real estate investment trusts. Additionally, LPL did not properly deliver over fourteen million trade confirmations to customers. LPL had no system set up to watch the amount of time customers held securities in their accounts or to enforce limits on concentrations of complex products in customer accounts. The systems that LPL did have set up to watch trading activity in customer accounts were ravaged by "multiple deficiencies." For example, LPL did not create proper anti-money laundering alerts and failed to deliver trade confirmations in 67,000 customer accounts. FINRA also penalized LPL for not supervising advertising and other communications, such as brokers' use of consolidated reports. The penalty includes [...]

By |May 13th, 2015|Press Releases & News|
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Disclaimer: Mr. Frankowski is licensed in Alabama,Florida and Texas. He is not licensed in any other state including Nevada and California. Mr. Frankowski has represented investors from all over the country in securities cases including: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas.