Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Would you invest in a company that beat the S&P 500 with 19% returns over the last five years? Sounds interesting, sure… But what if the chart of performance looked like this: That is a really straight line. Just one little flat period in December 2022. No, thank you. That’s a fraud. I saw this…
It caught my by surprise that the Securities and Exchange Commission brought a case against a crypto-crap company this week. After the SEC published its “clarification” on the application of federal securities laws to crypto assets I thought we wouldn’t see a crypto case for a long time. I guess the SEC found the actions…
Legend has it that Joseph P. Kennedy Senior pulled out of the stock market in 1929 when a shoe shine boy started giving him stock tips. What to do when your driver starts giving investment advice? Shahin Ahmed was the personal driver of a hedge fund manager. According to the SEC complaint, Mr. Ahmed met…
Cherry-picking and block trading accounts go hand in hand. The most recent firm to be found doing this is North East Asset Management and its principal Greg Zandlo. According to the SEC order, the firm had block trading account at an unaffiliated brokerage firm. This allowed the firm to place purchase and sale orders for…
There has been an uptick in more sophisticated fraudsters posing as registered representatives, investment advisers and their firms. In December, the SEC charged three individuals with impersonating financial professionals in fraud scheme targeting retail investors. With the money stolen does the victim have a case against the legitimate firm? Mark Frank Harding fell victim to…
In this case, the “prince” was a well established financial adviser. Chibuzo Augustine Onyeachonam, Stanley Chidubem Asiegbu, and Chukwuebuka Martin Nweke-Eze created websites using the the names of real US-based financial professional. For example assuming I was known financial professional and wanted to impersonate me they would create dougcornelius.com and send an email from doug…
The case against PHX Financial caught my attention because it involves actions of the firm before and after the compliance date of Regulation BI. During the Pre-Reg BI Period, PHX failed reasonably to supervise Representative 1, within the meaning of Section 15(b)(4)(E) of the Exchange Act, with the view to preventing and detecting Representative 1’s…
Was Robert Shumake a shaman or a securities fraudster? Or Both? On one hand he was the shaman of Soul Tribes in Detroit that was trying to “safe and sacred space for individuals to explore the healing benefits of sacred plants.” That apparently included storing over 99 pounds of mushrooms believed to be psilocybin and…
What’s with the fake profiles on Facebook, Instagram, or your social networking platform of choice reaching out to you? It’s likely the first step in a “relationship investment scam” or “pig butchering.” The scammer starts with casual conversations, try to build trust, maybe even a little romance. After building some trust/relationship over an extended period…
Back in December, Chair Gensler gave a speech to an AI Summit and warned about companies overstating their use artificial intelligence tools. From there, you can see the SEC approaching the concerns as part of fundraising fraud and marketing fraud. Chair Gensler probably knew that the Securities and Exchange Commission was actively working on two…