Archive

August 24, 2017

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a civil enforcement action against Defendants Thomas Lanzana (d/b/a Unique Forex) currently of Pawleys Island, South Carolina and his company Blackbox Pulse, LLC of North Bergen, New Jersey, and Nikolay Masanko and his company White Cloud Mountain, LLC, both of St. Augustine, Florida, charging them with fraud in connection with soliciting customers for their foreign currency derivatives (forex) trading pools and other investments. The CFTC Complaint, filed on August 21, 2017, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, also charges the Defendants with misappropriating customer funds and with registration violations. Lanzana resided at various times in Midland Park and New Bergen, New Jersey, until approximately 2015, according to the Complaint. CFTC

August 23, 2017

The CFPB ordered American Express to pay at least $1 million for the actions of two of its banking subsidiaries that discriminating against consumers in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other U.S. CFPB

August 17, 2017

The CFPB filed a complaint and proposed settlement against Aequitas Capital Management, Inc. and related entities, for aiding the Corinthian Colleges’ predatory lending scheme by enabling Corinthian to make high-cost private loans to students that both Aequitas and Corinthian knew students could not afford. Under the CFPB’s proposed settlement, about 41,000 Corinthian students could be eligible for approximately $183.3 million in loan forgiveness and reduction. CFPB

August 17, 2017

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that Judge William P. Dimitrouleas of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida entered a Consent Order against Defendants Jeffrey Slemmer of Acton, Massachusetts, Christian Dorrian of Boynton Beach, Florida, Adam Roth of Boca Raton, Florida, and their former respective Florida companies Slemmer Enterprises LLC, Dorrian Enterprises, LLC, and Roth Investment Group LLC, finding that the defendants fraudulently solicited customers in connection with precious metals and diamonds transactions, misappropriated customer funds, and concealed their fraud with false account statements. The defendants executed the scheme using the business names Berkley Hard Asset Group, Berkley Hard Assets, and Berkley Rare Diamonds (the Berkley Enterprise). The Order requires the Defendants to pay, jointly and severally, $2,738,040 in restitution to defrauded customers and a $2,738,040 civil monetary penalty. The Order also imposes permanent trading and registration bans against the defendants, among other things, and prohibits them from committing further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulations, as charged. CFTC

August 2, 2017

The CFPB ordered JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. to pay a $4.6 million penalty and implement necessary policy changes to address its failure to have proper, legally-required processes for reporting accurate consumer checking account behavior to consumer reporting companies. CFPB

June 30, 2017

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed fraud charges against the clandestine founder of a purported Bitcoin platform and a chain of co-working spaces located in former bars and restaurants, alleging that he bilked investors in both companies while hiding his connection given his checkered past with regulators in the U.K.  The SEC alleges that Renwick Haddow, a U.K. citizen living in New York, created a broker-dealer and did not register the firm with the SEC as required under the federal securities laws.  Haddow allegedly used sales representatives to cold call potential investors and sell securities in Bitcoin Store Inc. and Bar Works Inc. According to the SEC’s complaint, offering materials presented to investors in both companies touted the backgrounds of senior executives who do not appear to exist.  The materials also misrepresented other key facts about both companies’ operations.  Haddow allegedly diverted more than 80 percent of the in funds raised by the broker-dealer for the Bitcoin Store, and sent more than $4 million from the Bar Works bank accounts to one or more accounts in Mauritius and $1 million to one or more accounts in Morocco. SEC

June 22, 2017

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced additional charges in an enforcement investigation involving the improper handling of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) by a Wall Street firm’s securities lending desk. The SEC’s order finds supervisory failures by Anthony Portelli, a former managing director and head of operations at broker-dealer ITG Inc.  Portelli supervised ITG’s securities lending operations and was responsible for the firm’s compliance with “pre-release agreements” for ADR transactions.  ADRs are U.S. securities that represent foreign shares of a foreign company.  Before obtaining a “pre-released ADR” to lend to a customer, brokers like ITG must own, or determine that a customer owns, the number of foreign shares that corresponds to the number of shares the ADR represents.  Under Portelli’s watch, personnel on ITG’s securities lending desk failed to take reasonable steps to determine whether the proper amounts of foreign shares were owned and held by ITG’s customers.  This failure opened up the possibility that the ADRs could be used improperly for short selling or dividend arbitrage. SEC

June 5, 2017

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged  a Salt Lake City-based brokerage firm with securities law violations related to its alleged practice of clearing transactions for microcap stocks that were used in manipulative schemes to harm investors. To help detect potential securities law and money laundering violations, broker-dealers are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) that describe suspicious transactions that take place through their firms.  The SEC’s complaint alleges that Alpine Securities Corporation routinely and systematically failed to file SARs for stock transactions that it flagged as suspicious.  When it did file SARs, Alpine Securities allegedly frequently omitted the very information that formed the bases for Alpine knowing, suspecting, or having reason to suspect that a transaction was suspicious.  As noted in the complaint, guidance for preparing SARs from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) clearly states that “[e]xplaining why the transaction is suspicious is critical.” SEC

July 27, 2017

The CFPB filed two complaints and proposed final judgments in federal court against four California-based credit repair companies and three individuals, Prime Credit, LLC, IMC Capital, LLC, Commercial Credit Consultants, Park View Law, known formerly as Prime Law Experts, Inc., Blake Johnson, Eric Schlegel, and Arthur Barens, for misleading consumers and charging illegal fees. The complaints allege that the companies not only charged illegal advance fees for credit repair services, but also misrepresented their ability to repair consumers’ credit scores. CFPB

July 20, 2017

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced today the settling of charges against Respondents Arthur Toole IIIof Atlanta, Georgia, and his companies, Billionaire Investor Group (BIG), a Texas limited liability company, The Toole Group Inc. (Toole Group), a Texas corporation, and Catalyst Traders LLC (Catalyst), a Georgia limited liability company, for misappropriating commodity pool funds, fraudulent misrepresentations, commingling pool funds, and acting as an unregistered commodity pool operator. The CFTC Order finds that from in or about February 2011 through at least January 2016, Toole incorporated his companies in Texas and Georgia, all of which operated as separate, consecutive commodity pools and which primarily traded Chicago Mercantile Exchange Euro FX futures and E-Mini Dow futures contracts. The Order further finds that Toole solicited over $375,000 from pool participants for the three commodity pools and misappropriated over $244,000 from the pools for personal and non-trading expenses. Pool participants suffered net losses amounting to $293,141, according to the Order. The Order also finds that Toole misrepresented trading results and the pools’ assets under management and commingled funds from all three pools with non-pool property. CFTC