Regulatory Violations

December 22, 2015

Morgan Stanley Investment Management will pay $8.8 million to settle charges that one of its portfolio managers, Sheila Huang, unlawfully conducted prearranged trading known as “parking” that favored certain advisory client accounts over others.  An SEC investigation found that Huang arranged sales of mortgage-backed securities to brokerage firm SG Americas at predetermined prices that would enable her to buy back the positions at a small markup into other accounts advised by Morgan Stanley.  Huang also sold additional bonds at above-market prices to avoid incurring losses in certain accounts, but repurchased them at unfavorable prices in a fund that she managed without disclosing it to the disadvantaged fund client.  SG Americas also agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle SEC charges related to its role in these transactions.  SEC

December 18, 2015

J.P. Morgan wealth management subsidiaries, J.P. MorganSecurities LLC and JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., will pay $267 million to settle charges that they failed to disclose conflicts of interest to clients.  An SEC investigation found that the businesses preferred to invest clients in the firm’s own proprietary investment products without properly disclosing this preference.  This preference impacted fundamental aspects of money management — asset allocation and selection of fund managers.  In a parallel action, JP Morgan Chase Bank will pay an additional $40 million penalty to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  SEC

December 15, 2015

The SEC announced fraud charges against Connecticut-based investment advisory firm Atlantic Asset Management LLC for investing clients in certain bonds with a hidden financial benefit to the broker-dealer connected to the firm.  The SEC alleges that Atlantic invested more than $43 million of client funds in illiquid bonds issued by a native American tribal corporation without disclosing the conflict of interest that the bond sales generated a private placement fee for the broker-dealer, whose parent company partially owns Atlantic.  SEC

December 7, 2015

The SEC announced a series of enforcement actions against lawyers across the country charged with offering EB-5 investments while not registered to act as brokers.  The SEC settled administrative proceedings against at least seven immigration law firms and/or attorneys, who agreed to cease and desist from acting as unregistered brokers, and collectively will pay over $700,000 in disgorgement, penalties, and prejudgment interest.  The SEC also filed a complaint in federal district court in Los Angeles alleging that immigration attorney Hui Feng and the Law Office of Feng & Associates not only acted as unregistered brokers by selling EB-5 investments to more than 100 investors, but also defrauded their clients by failing to disclose their receipt of commissions on the investments in breach of their fiduciary and legal duties. SEC

November 24, 2015

Political intelligence firm, Marwood Group Research LLC, will pay a $375,000 penalty for failing to properly inform compliance officers about instances in which analysts obtained potential material nonpublic information from government employees.  According to the SEC’s order, in 2010, Marwood analysts sought and received information about policy issues or pending regulatory approvals before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Without bringing this information to the compliance department to be vetted for any material nonpublic information, Marwood drafted research notes based in part on this information and distributed them directly to clients who could have used any material nonpublic information contained therein to inform securities trading decisions.  SEC

November 19, 2015

The SEC obtained a court order freezing the assets of Lin Zhong and her company EB5 Asset Manager LLC.  The SEC alleges that Zhong and EB5 raised at least $8.5 million for use in job-creating real estate development projects, but they diverted nearly $1 million to purchase a boat, a BMW, and a Mercedes among other improper personal uses of investor funds.  SEC

November 19, 2015

Investment firm Sands Brothers Asset Management LLC and its founders and former chief compliance officer will pay over $1 million to settle charges of violating the custody rule which requires firms to obtain independent verification of assets when they can access or control client money or securities.  Sands Brothers was in trouble twice before with the SEC — in 2010 for violating the custody rule and in 2014 for belatedly providing investors audited financial statements of its private funds.  SEC

November 16, 2015

Investment management firm Virtus Investment Advisers agreed to pay $16.5 million to settle charges that it misled mutual fund investors through advertisements containing false historical performance data about AlphaSector, a major exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolio strategy.  Virtus publicized a substantially overstated performance track record received from F-Squared, a sub-adviser it had hired for mutual funds and other clients following the AlphaSector strategy.  Virtus accepted F-Squared’s historical performance misrepresentations at face value and ignored red flags that called these claims into question.  During the period in which Virtus used the false and misleading advertisements, its AlphaSector funds’ assets under management grew from $191 million at the end of 2009 to $11.5 billion by 2013.  SEC

November 3, 2015

Private equity firm Fenway Partners and four executives will pay over $10 million to settle SEC charges of failure to disclose conflicts of interest.  An SEC investigation found that Fenway and the charged executives did not fully disclose to a client fund and investors the details of several transactions involving more than $20 million in payments by the client fund or affiliated portfolio companies.  In short, investors were not told that portfolio company fees were rerouted to a Fenway affiliate, allowing Fenway to avoid providing the benefits of those fees to the client in the form of management fee offsets.  SEC

October 28, 2015

The SEC barred two brokers from now-defunct Connecticut brokerage Rochdale Securities.  According to the SEC’s allegations, the two brokers defrauded customers by using their order information to advise two longtime customers to trade ahead of these orders.  As a result, the favored customers profited from the trades, the defrauded customers generally received worse prices than if their orders had been routed directly to the market, and the brokers received double trading commissions.  SEC