Robert H. Rex Law Blog

Investors
were unaware that the nest eggs they had entrusted their broker with
were being used to for his personal expenses, including his gambling
debts.

While working as a registered broker for Geneos Wealth
Management, Inc. from 2005-2011, former broker Marc Duda, age 37, 
bilked  more than 10 , mostly elderly, investors out of millions,
possibly as much as ten million. Duda told these unsuspecting victims
that he was purchasing... Read More

The
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issues a report on
disciplinary and other actions involving registered brokers, investment
advisers and brokerage firms every month.

Follow this link to the FINRA website for the entire report for the month of May 2012 as well as to access  earlier time periods.

Here are the... Read More

According to the recent quarterly report (10Q for Q1), a copy of which can be found here
on the company website, Inland American REIT is currently under
investigation by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

According
to the report, the SEC investigation is to determine if there have been
violations of federal securities laws related to:business manager feesproperty... Read More

As we have previously reported,
Inland Western Real Estate Investment Trust was recently converted, via
a reverse merger,  from its status as a non exchange-traded REIT to a
publicly traded company-Retail Properties of America (RPAI).

Before
getting too excited about the fact that the  investment can now be
... Read More

It
is becoming apparent that exchange traded funds (ETFs) continue to
arouse the attention of Washington and securities regulators.

Early
in the week FINRA levied over $9 million in fines and restitution for
the sale of ETFs to retail customers against UBS, Citgroup, Morgan
Stanley and Wells Fargo. Here is a prior discussion on that topic. For all of the... Read More

It has been a big week for revelations in the world of exchange traded funds (ETFs) . The SEC hit Citigroup, Morgan Stanley , Read More

RBC
Capital Markets, the brokerage unit of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
agreed to pay investors $2.9 million to cover losses on leveraged and
inverse leveraged exchange traded funds to settle an action brought by
Massachusetts securities regulators who found that highly volatile,
nontraditional funds did not fit with some clients' investment
objectives. In addition, the firm was fined $250,000.

“This settlement details an... Read More

According
to a recent report issued by Carey Research, buyers need to be wary
when buying some exchange traded funds (ETFs) since the name used for
the fund can be misleading. According to its  author, senior analyst
Vedran Vuk, the fine print may reveal that the fund is not what the name
of the fund would suggest.

According to Vuk, a fund name may
have absolutely nothing to do with its contents and his report
identifies the top... Read More

On May 1,
2012, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) charged UBS
Financial Services of Puerto Rico and two executives, Miguel A. Ferrer
and Carlos J. Ortiz, with making misleading statements to investors,
concealing a liquidity crisis, and masking its control of the secondary
market for 23 proprietary closed-end mutual funds.

UBS has agreed to settle the SEC charges by paying $26.6 million that will be placed in a fund for investors.... Read More

On
May 1, 2012, FINRA fined Citigroup $2 million, censured the firm
and ordered restitution of $146,431 to customers for selling leveraged
and inverse exchange-traded funds (non-traditional ETFs) "without
reasonable supervision".

The letter of acceptance waiver and consent between FINRA and Citigroup contains the following findings:
Citigroup
consented to a fine of $500,000 in July 2011 for failure to detect or
respond... Read More