Securities Lawyers Blog
The attorneys at Gana Weinstein LLP are investigating BrokerCheck records reports that financial advisor Michael Stanton (Stanton), currently employed by Worden Capital Management LLC (Worden Capital) has been subject to at least four customer complaints, two regulatory complaints, and nine financial disclosures and or tax and civil liens. According to records kept by The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Stanton’s customer complaints allege that Stanton recommended unsuitable securities and engaged in excessive trading and churning among other allegations of misconduct in the handling of customer accounts.
In November 2016 Stanton was named a respondent in a FINRA complaint alleging that he and his member firm failed to establish, maintain, and enforce a reasonable supervisory system to prevent a registered representative from churning and excessively trading a customer’s brokerage accounts. FINRA alleged that Stanton and the firm failed to adequately investigate red flags demonstrating that the registered representative was churning the customer’s accounts. FINRA found that Stanton and the firm also failed to adequately investigate that the registered representative engaged in aggressive, “in-and-out” trading for no apparent reason – the hallmark of excessive trading and churning. Stanton was suspended for seven months and fined $5,000 as a result.