A financial planner from Eugene, Oregon, James Scott McKee, was barred from the industry after he failed to comply with an arbitration award. FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, had alleged that McKee steered his clients to invest $372,000 in businesses which he had a financial interest. It also alleged that McKee used $652,215 in […]

Soreide Law Group, PLLC, has launched an investigation into the suspended Idaho broker, Vincenzo (Vince) Covino. Covino was employed at Legacy Wealth Management Group in Boise, and Prospera Financial Services. Covino was with LPL Financial until 2009. Vince Covino was fined and suspended by FINRA for borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a client, […]

Soreide Law Group, PLLC, is currently investigating the marketing and sales of non-traditional exchange traded funds (ETFs) to investors. Many of the country's leading banks – including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo – were recently sanctioned by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for more than $9.1 million over their failure to supervise […]

Do security futures, a high risk investment, have a place in your investment portfolio? Depending on your risk tolerance, a key component of financial planning, and your understanding of security futures contracts, writes Adriana Reyneri, in an October article from "Millionare Corner." “Security futures involve a high degree of risk and are not suitable for […]

Levinski Dealexis Barnes (CRD #2292179, Registered Representative, Lutz, Florida) has been named a respondent in a FINRA complaint alleging that he discussed with a customer an investment in an accounting business that Barnes and other individuals were contemplating purchasing. The FINRA complaint alleges that Barnes told the customer that if the offer for the business […]

Andrew Martin Abern (CRD #1610607, Registered Principal, Miami, Florida) was censured and fined $25,000. Without admitting or denying the findings, Abern consented to the described sanctions and to the entry of findings that he provided some customers with VA expense disclosure forms that contained inaccurate information; the forms understated the annual expenses that would be […]

FINRA publishes a quarterly review to provide firms with a sampling of recent disciplinary actions involving misconduct by registered representatives. The sample includes settled matters and decisions in litigated cases (National Adjudicatory Council (NAC) decisions and SEC decisions in FINRA cases). These summaries call attention to, and remind registered representatives and member firms of, specific […]

Clifford Jagodzinski, formerly of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC (MSSB), claims he was fired for blowing the whistle on one of the firm's newest wealth managers, Harvey Kadden. According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, Kadden “was flipping preferred securities in a manner that was generating […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged three former brokers at JP Turner & Co. in Atlanta, traded excessively in accounts of seven clients from January, 2008, through December, 2009. Regulators reported that these three brokers churned their client's accounts and received $845,000 in commissions and fees for themselves and the brokerage. Unfortunately, their customers lost […]