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The SEC recently announced it would pursue fraud charges and freeze the assets of the Jay Peak, Inc. Vermont ski resort. The SEC alleges that Ariel Quiros, of Miami, and William Stenger, of Vermont, conducted an illegal Ponzi-like scheme in connection with the funds raised for the resort. The total amount of money in question…

On April 29, 2016, the SEC brought and settled charges that an accounting firm, Santos, Postal & Co. (“Santos”) and one of its principals, Joseph Scolaro (“Scolaro”), performed inadequate surprise exams of one of their investment advisor clients, SFX Financial (“SFX”), the president of which stole over $670k from SPX clients. Santos and Scolaro neither…

The SEC’s investor advocate, Rick Fleming, has told Congress that one of the SEC’s focuses in the coming budgetary year (starting October 2016) will be the quality of advisor and broker dealer fee disclosures. The SEC is concerned that such disclosures (referencing things like advisory, trailer, administrative, “regulatory,” and custodial fees) are confusing to retail investors…

Having substantial assets under management (AUM) can really boost an investment adviser’s ability to attract new money. Accordingly, there is tremendous pressure to report strong numbers to the investing public, including through news sources (e.g., Barron’s top advisors list). As one adviser has found out, the price of inflating such AUM numbers can be millions…

On August 19, 2016, Eric Ben-Artzi, a former Deutsche Bank risk officer, stated he would not accept his portion of a $16.5 million whistleblower award from the SEC because the executives he contends were responsible for overvaluing certain portfolios at the bank were not being personally held accountable in the bank’s settlement with the SEC.  Ben-Artzi had provided information to…

The DOL Fiduciary Rule, effective April 2017, is among the items that the new administration may put on hold upon taking office in January 2017. Once effective, the Rule makes all financial advisers providing rollover and other advice to retirement investors “fiduciaries” required to put retail customers’ interests before the advisers’ interests in getting compensated.…

RIAs serving customers on a percentage of assets under management (% AUM) basis, or for some other non-variable form of comp (e.g., flat fees), need to be aware that it is not “business as usual” under the DOL Fiduciary Rule, some version of which is likely to go into effect in 2017. While such advisers…

The DOL has proposed an initial 15-day public comment period on the issue of whether to delay the April 10 implementation date of the DOL fiduciary rule, which, if ever effective, would subject large amounts of IRA rollover advice, and other retirement advice, to a fiduciary standard. After the 15 days, the DOL has proposed another 45…

The DOL has issued a temporary policy stating that it will not bring enforcement actions against firms that are not Rule compliant by April 10. In other words, DOL will not bring enforcement actions against advisers for the “gap” period between April 10 and the date on which the DOL officially delays the Rule (if…

Under a Senate bill, the SEC would be able to administratively impose a maximum $1 million per violation penalty on individuals and a maximum $10 million per violation penalty on financial firms for the most serious (e.g., fraud, deceit) violations.  The current levels are substantially lower — at $181,071 for individuals and $905,353 for firms —…