Articles Posted in Firm News

(December 16) The SEC today filed civil charges against the once-powerful Peter Eichler, Jr., and his embattled money management firm Aletheia Research and Management of Santa Monica. At one point high-flying Aletheia had $10B in assets under management and counted the state pensions of Louisiana and Oklahoma among its clients, but declared bankruptcy in November…

(December 14) Crowdfunding advocates and entrepreneurs continue to eagerly monitor the progress of regulators at FINRA, as it develops interim rules to allow the advertisement and sale of equity securities online. “Funding portals” as authorized under the JOBS Act signed in April remain illegal until regulation is complete. The most optimistic projection for having rules…

Today is the last day of the chairmanship of Mary Schapiro at the SEC. As investor advocates, let’s look ahead at major issues for the SEC in 2013. It’ll be a busy year. There are at least five large-scale reforms under way, all with a bearing on the safety of equity investments. Mary Schapiro took…

(December 13) The former CFO of Provident Royalties was indicted today by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. W. Mark Miller, 59, faces a possible 20 year sentence. Miller’s indictment is the latest legal reckoning in the 2009 collapse of the Dallas oil and gas investment fraud (and partial…

(December 12) Legal action by Massachusetts securities regulators serves as a warning to investors about an entire class of investments. Charges were filed against LPL Financial LLC, the largest organization of independent financial advisors in the U.S., on the sales of nontraded REITs offered by Inland American Real Estate Trust, the largest nontraded REIT in…

(December 11) Former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court indicating that he and his wife were the victims of financial fraud. The suit accuses the Voyager Financial Group of Little Rock, Arkansas of accepting $600,000 from Goldschmidt in return for an income stream derived from Voyager’s business of buying…

(December 11) A former U.S. Congressman for Oregon’s Second District was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison on tax evasion charges and ordered to repay $3.5 million to defrauded investors, along with $138,470 in back taxes. Republican Wes Cooley, now 80 years old, served one term beginning in 1994. He withdrew…

(December 11) Prominent U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has criticized the current system of bringing class action suits in securities cases. Speaking at a conference on securities litigation organized by the New York Bar, Kaplan pointed to causes ranging from legal precedent (the restrictive “fraud-on-the-market” reasoning of the 1988 Supreme Court decision in Basic Inc…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THREE MORE TRADERS IMPLICATED IN GRIFPHON PONZI SCHEME As reported in a December 6th article in The Oregonian, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three more men with securities violations in connection with Grifphon Asset Management. The Grifphon Alpha Fund was the $37 million hedge fund scheme run by Yusaf Jawed…

(December 7) An auction of the corporate vehicles, furniture and other assets belonging to disgraced commodity trader Russell Wasendorf of Cedar Falls, Iowa netted $1M. Although considered successful by the court-appointed receiver and the bankruptcy trustee, it’s half of one percent of the $190M shortfall still owed to 25,000 investors of Wasendorf’s Peregrine Financial Group,…