Contact

Click here for a confidential contact or call:

1-212-350-2774

Securities Fraud

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to securities fraud. You may also be interested in the following pages:

Page 83 of 90

August 11, 2014

As part of its nationwide review of municipal bond offerings, the SEC charged the state of Kansas with failing to properly disclose material pension liabilities and other risks to investors.  According to the SEC’s cease-and-desist order, the state’s offering documents failed to disclose the state’s pension system was significantly underfunded and created a repayment risk for investors in those bonds.  The SEC previously sanctioned New Jersey for failing to disclose to investors that it was underfunding the state’s two largest pension plans.  It also charged Illinois last year for its misleading pension disclosures.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

August 8, 2014

The SEC charged Bahamas-based brokerage firm Alliance Investment Management Limited (AIM) and its president Julian R. Brown with misrepresenting themselves as the “custodian” for assets under the management of hedge fund manager Nikolai Battoo when they did not have such custody.  They also allowed Battoo to create false account statements on AIM letterhead that vastly overstated the value of investors’ assets by more than $150 million.  Brown and AIM then routinely provided the false account statements to auditors and others acting on behalf of Battoo’s investors.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 8, 2014

The SEC charged New York-based brokerage firm Crucible Capital Group and its founder Charles “Chuck” Moore for allegedly violating net capital requirements and falsifying books and records to conceal the capital deficiencies.  According to the SEC, they attempted to disguise the firm’s extensive net capital insufficiencies by improperly off-loading its liabilities onto the books of an affiliated firm and improperly treating non-marketable stock as an allowable asset.  Moore went so far as to try to hide Crucible’s true financial condition from SEC examiners by providing them doctored invoices that sought to mask the extent of those liabilities.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 7, 2014

The SEC charged Anthony G. Blumberg, the former CEO of a broker-dealer subsidiary of ConvergEx Group LLC, with deceiving brokerage customers with hidden fees to buy and sell securities.  According to the SEC, the scheme entailed concealing the practice of routing orders to an offshore affiliate in Bermuda to add mark-ups or mark-downs.  The hidden fees known as “trading profits” were in addition to and often much higher than the commissions paid by customers to have their orders executed.  The charges against Blumberg follow those announced in December by the SEC against three ConvergEx subsidiaries that agreed to pay more than $107 million and admit wrongdoing to settle the matter.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 4, 2014

The SEC charged Houston-based oil-and-gas exploration and production company Houston American Energy Corp. and its CEO John F. Terwilliger with making fraudulent claims about the company’s oil reserves.  According to the SEC, Terwilliger and his company fraudulently claimed that a Colombian exploration concession in which Houston American only owned a fractional interest held between 1 billion and 4 billion barrels of oil reserves, and that the reserves were worth more than $100 per share to Houston American’s investors.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

August 1, 2014

The SEC obtained a final judgment requiring Richmond, Va.-based financial services holding company AIC Inc., its subsidiary brokerage firm Community Bankers Securities LLC, and their CEO Nicholas D. Skaltsounis to pay nearly $70 million for conducting an offering fraud while selling AIC promissory notes and stock to numerous investors across multiple states, many of whom were elderly or unsophisticated brokerage customers.  SEC

Tagged in: Securities Fraud,

July 31, 2014

Virginia-based broker Donna Jessee Tucker agreed to disgorge $730,000 in ill-gotten gains to settle charges of defrauding elderly customers, including some who are legally blind, by stealing their funds for her personal use and falsifying their account statements to cover up her fraud.  SEC

Tagged in: Securities Fraud,

July 31, 2014

LA-based broker Michael A. Horowitz agreed to pay more than $850,000 to settle charges he participated in a variable annuities scheme designed to profit from the imminent deaths of the terminally ill.  As part of his scheme, he deceived his own brokerage firm to obtain the approvals he needed to sell the annuities and generate hefty sales commissions.  He also falsified various broker-dealer forms used by firms to conduct investment suitability reviews, causing some insurance companies to unwittingly issue variable annuities they may not have sold otherwise.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

July 30, 2014

The SEC charged CEO Marc Sherman and former CFO Edward L. Cummings of Florida-based computer equipment company QSGI Inc. with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by misrepresenting to external auditors and the investing public the state of the company’s internal controls over financial reporting.  SEC

Tagged in: Accounting Fraud, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

1 … 81 82 83 84 85 … 90

Newsletter

Subscribe to receive email updates from the Constantine Cannon blogs

Sign up for: