Articles Posted in Financial

Today the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) announced a massive LPL Financial settlement with state securities regulators relating to over a decade of sales of unregistered securities by LPL brokers. Under the terms of the LPL Financial settlement, the firm agreed to repurchase from investors certain securities that were sold to them since October,…

Victims of COVID-19 Scams and Cybercrime Need to Act Fast – FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain May Recover Fraudulent Wire Transfers Cybercrime is becoming ever more pervasive, and with so many more people working at home during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the risk of a fraudulent wire transfer and other financially motivated crimes is higher…

“Recent Tools to Combat Financial Elder Abuse”: a closer look at mandatory and permissive conduct for Oregon securities professionals. Today, over 46 million Americans are 65 years of age or older. This accounts for nearly 15% of the population. According to the Population Reference Bureau, that number is projected to more than double by the…

Securities attorney Darlene Pasieczny will speak about FINRA expungement issues at the PIABA Mid-Year Meeting: Current Issues in Securities Arbitration. The panel presentation will be on April 4, 2019, in Washington DC. Presentation topics to include: Expungement of customer dispute information from a broker’s or brokerage firm’s CRD and Bro­kerCheck disclosure reports continues to be…

Did you know – most stockbrokers and registered investment advisors (RIAs) are not required by law to carry errors and omissions insurance? Beginning July 31, 2018, with an amendment to the Oregon Securities Law, Oregon became only state in the nation to require certain state-regulated financial professionals to carry errors and omissions insurance. These financial…

Current cryptocurrency regulation and cryptocurrency investment regulation can be summed up in one phrase:  Regulation by Enforcement. I moderated a great panel presentation this weekend on Cryptocurrency Investments, Supervision and Securities Regulation at PIABA’s mid-year CLE event in Los Angeles on May 5, 2018.  We discussed the current state of regulation as well as the…

Why mediate? What is mediation? Why do it in FINRA arbitration? Simply put, mediation is a voluntary process by which disputing parties agree to negotiate with a professional referee – a neutral mediator – to try to settle a dispute. Settlement means resolving a case before incurring further time, costs, and the risk of losing…

Ten Red Flags of Investment Fraud We’ve updated our list of ten red flags that  investors should be aware of: danger signs that point to potential mismanagement of an account or investment fraud by a financial advisor. These red flags are useful as you evaluate your own investments, review the investments of an elderly relative,…

On February 5, 2018, a new FINRA rule geared towards preventing financial exploitation of seniors  – also called elder financial abuse – goes into effect. This is new Rule 2165, which creates a limited safe harbor for brokers to put a temporary hold on certain disbursement requests from a brokerage account. The rule “permits members…

This past Thursday, the same day I posted about a recent FINRA Investor Alert regarding cryptocurrency, there was a new press release from the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) with further guidance on the same topic. NASAA’s analysis and warning amounts to this:  Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), and all other investment products related to…