A top U.S. regulator said on Friday he is worried that investment advisers may be getting away with securities violations that are going undetected, and he called for action to improve how advisers are policed. In a speech in Colorado, Securities and Exchange Commission member Daniel Gallagher unveiled the results of a new SEC review that showed an “eye-popping” percentage of licensed brokers have checkered histories, even though they are routinely inspected by regulators. More on Reuters [...]
|
||||
|
It seems ironic that a federal agency with a longstanding mandate to protect investors would need a new advocate to do just that. Nonetheless, Rick Fleming, the first head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Advocate, is busy setting up shop, staffing a six-person office and setting priorities. The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law called for the post at a time when the SEC was under attack for numerous failures. Among them: missing red flags that would have revealed Bernard Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme years before he wiped out investors. The SEC, critics said, had paid too much attention to its other mandate: clearing the way for businesses to raise capital through securities offerings. More on Reuters [...] The chief counsel in the Bernie Madoff recovery effort says he’s confident most of the funds lost in the Ponzi scheme will be recovered over the next few years. But where is the money coming from? In an exclusive interview from his New York office, Chief Counsel David Sheehan tells WBZ’s Anthony Silva that he and trustee Irving Picard have almost 900 lawsuits in the process, with the biggest effort aimed at those who enjoyed fake profits. More on CBS Boston [...] The investors who lost billions of dollars in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme may actually get all of their lost investments back. Court appointed trustee Irving Picard says about 800 legal cases remain unresolved but he’s confident everyone will be reimbursed. Tuesday’s payout is the fourth in the Madoff recovery efforts. More on CBS Boston [...] The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm on Monday began distributing another $351.6 million to the swindler’s former customers, boosting the amount recouped to nearly $6 billion. Irving Picard, the trustee, said the fourth interim payout will go to victims of the Ponzi scheme who had 1,081 accounts at Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities. Payments range from about $500 to about $77.8 million and average $325,000. More on CNBC [...] The receiver for Robert Allen Stanford filed an adversary suit against the Tiger Woods Foundation in Texas federal court Tuesday, claiming the charity collected more than $500,000 in fraudulent transfers from the notorious Ponzi schemer’s companies. Ralph Janvey, who was appointed to oversee Stanford International Bank Ltd. and its affiliated entities in February 2009, claims that the nonprofit organization founded by the famous golfer and a related company, Tiger Woods Charity Event Corp., accepted two transfers totaling $502,000 from Stanford Financial Group Co. at an unspecified date. More on Law360 [...] Irving Picard’s efforts to spread money among Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi victims hit a snag Monday, when a judge ruled that Picard must present more potent allegations to proceed with so-called avoidance actions against entities like Societe Generale SA and Uni-Credit SpA that handled Madoff funds. The official winding down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s brokerage business says he plans to return more than $4 billion in cash to former employees and other creditors. James W. Giddens, the court-appointed trustee winding down Lehman’s broker-dealer, said in a statement Wednesday that now that he’s made whole the failed brokerage’s customers, he can turn his full attention to creditors. “With the return of 100 percent of customers’ assets, we are now able to lay out a clear plan for winding down the general estate and distributing assets to general creditors as quickly as possible,” Mr. Giddens said. More in the Wall Street Journal [...] H.R.3482 – New Cosponsor – Representative Steve Scalise [R-LA1] has signed on to co-sponsor H.R.3482 – Restoring Main Street Investor Protection and Confidence Act S.1725 – New Cosponsor – Senator Robert “Bob” Casey [D-PA] has signed on to co-sponsor the sister Senate bill S. [...] For just about as long as there has been money, people have found ways to steal it. And as sure as there will be money 25 years from now—at least in some form—white-collar crooks will still be plying their trade. But new technologies could create a world where, as one former law-enforcement official warns, “the sky’s the limit in terms of what fraud you can commit.” Experts say the crimes themselves never change much. From basic frauds and Ponzi schemes to complex security breaches, money laundering and tax avoidance, there are only so many ways a crook can make a buck. When CNBC launched in 1989, junk bond king Michael Milken was defending himself against securities fraud charges in a sweeping insider-trading investigation. Twenty-five years later another Wall Street insider-trading crackdown—this one focusing on hedge funds—has ensnared 79 people and counting. See CNBC report [...] |
||||
|
Contact us by phone at (631) 425-0770, fax at (631) 421-5701 or by email at admin@investoraction.org
|
||||