Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Minnesota residents Jason Dodd Bullard and Angela Romero-Bullard raised millions from investors, mostly friends and family, and said it would be used to trade foreign currencies. Instead, the Securities and Exchange Commission claims that the two diverted the money to other uses and falsified account statements. In the classic Ponzi scheme fashion, they used new … Read more »
Return Time. Back to the office. Back to school for the kids. And back to blogging more regularly. These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention. In Silicon Valley, Criminal Prosecutors See No Evilby David StretifeldThe New York Times Federal prosecutors in Northern California took on only 57 white-collar crime cases … Read more »
SoFi Wealth, the robo-adviser ran into trouble when it substituted third-party ETFs with SoFi-sponsored ETFs in its platform. According to the SEC order, SoFi Wealth failed to provide its clients with full and fair disclosure of its conflicts of interest relating to the transactions, including that it: SoFi had a preference for placing clients into SoFi’s … Read more »
D.H. Hill Securities got hit with a FINRA penalty for violating the private placement offering rules. FINRA concluded that D.H. Hill did not have a pre-existing, substantive relationships with several investors in an offering. This was a breach of the Rule 502(c) The key point from the settlement was that the D.H. Hill began participating … Read more »
Accept at face value that Profit Connect is not a scam. That is a stretch given the purported high returns, coupled with a money back guarantee. • 15% to 20% Fixed APR• High-Net-Worth 30% APR• APR is Locked-In• 100% Money Back Guarantee No such thing as high returns with no risk. Of course, if the … Read more »
Cases against Chief Compliance Officers catch my attention. Jack Cook is the Chief Compliance Officer of Princeton Alternative Funding. He is in the crosshairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC Commissioners and senior OCIE staff have usually stated three circumstances that lead to CCO liability: when the CCO is affirmatively involved in misconduct; … Read more »
The Dark Web and bitcoin are the tools of the trade for online criminals these days. Apostolos Trovias is alleged to be one of those criminals. He operated online under the pseudonymous online avatar “TheBull”. Mr. Trovias is alleged to have engaged in a deceptive scheme to offer and sell what he called “insider trading … Read more »
The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 brought art dealers under the umbrella of anti-money laundering regulation. Section 6110(a) of the AML Act amends the definition of “financial institution” under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to include persons “engaged in the trade of antiquities” and directs FinCEN to promulgate implementing regulations. The value of fine art … Read more »
The Securities and Exchange Commission took a big step with private funds and setting a defined standard of Regulated Assets Under Management. There is still discretion in how different aspects are calculated. It works well for hedge funds and private equity funds. It starts breaking down as you have more alternative assets that fall outside … Read more »
There are so many buckets for classifying clients and investors under the SEC regulatory standards. Lots of focus and discussion has been targeted at the “accredited investor” standard for private placements. The “Qualified Client” standard under the Investment Advisers Act seems to attract very little attention. Rule 205-3 under the Advisers Act exempts an investment … Read more »