The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in an acceptance, waiver, and consent action (AWC), sanctioned brokerage firm LaSalle St. Securities, LLC (LaSalle) over allegations that staff found certain deficiencies with respect to: 1) a private placement offering involving Seat Exchange Corporation where LaSalle failed to exercise adequate due diligence before…
Your brokerage firm reviews customer accounts for misconduct and what does it find; bizarre and unreasonable trading activity. Maybe dozens of trades are being made every month or an account previously invested in plain vanilla mutual funds is now loaded up with speculative penny stocks and private placements. Whatever the…
The law offices of Gana Weinstein LLP are investigating a series of claims before The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in relation to the conduct of financial advisor Robert Smith (Smith). Smith has been accused by at least 10 customers over his career concerning allegations that Smith overconcentrated the customer’s…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in an acceptance, waiver, and consent action (AWC), sanctioned brokerage firm Essex Securities, LLC (Essex Securities) alleging that from February 2010, through March 2011, Essex Securities through one of its brokers violated industry rules by engaging in a pattern of unsuitable mutual fund switching,…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in an acceptance, waiver, and consent action (AWC) sanctioned brokerage firm Genworth Financial Securities Corporation (Genworth) n/k/a Cetera Financial Specialists, LLC (Cetera) concerning allegations that from July 2009, through June 2012, the firm failed to establish a supervisory system and enforce written supervisory procedures…
In the prior post we discussed the extremely difficult journey an investor may have to go through in order to obtain relevant discovery documents from the brokerage industry in FINRA arbitration. We also discussed how the system is stacked against the investor’s rights and provides incentives to firms to withhold…
Many securities arbitration attorneys would agree that discovery abuse in FINRA arbitration is a problem under certain circumstances. A client has a seemingly great and compelling case. Then the brokerage firm produces its “discovery” but something doesn’t seem right. Documents recording decisions on key dates are missing, there are unexpected…
Recently, FINRA and the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an alert to warn investors that some low-priced “penny” stocks are being aggressively promoted to engage in investment fraud schemes. In many cases the stocks of dormant shell companies, businesses with nominal business operations, are susceptible to market…
Gana Weinstein LLP, a nationally renowned securities and investment arbitration firm, is investigating Richard Martin, and his from firm G.F. Investment Services, LLC for making unsuitable investments to their customers. According FINRA’s BrokerCheck, Mr. Martin has 8 customer complaints served against him and/or his former firms concerning his activities. According to FINRA, four…
Gana Weinstein LLP is investigating JPMorgan Securities (“JP Morgan”) in connection with the supervision of Benjamin Doyle Maleche and allegations of “selling away.” “Selling away” occurs when a securities broker or broker-dealer buys, solicits, or sells securities that were not approved by the broker’s affiliated firm or recorded on the firm’s books and…