SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - June 8th, 2012
(Jun 2012)
Court Enters Final Judgments, Including Indemnity Bars, Against Rajnish K. Das and Stormy L. Dean, Former CFOs of infoUSA, Inc.
June 1, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22388)
As a result of the SEC complaint against Rajnish K. Das and Stormy L. Dean, the US District Court for the District of Nebraska barred the pair from serving as an officer or director of a public company for three years and levied a civil penalty of $50,000 against each of them. In the complaint, the SEC alleged Das and Dean...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - June 1st, 2012
(Jun 2012)
SEC Charges Two Feeders for One of South Florida's Largest-Ever Ponzi Schemes,
May 31, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22383)
The SEC charged George Levin and Frank Preve with perpetrating a Ponzi scheme through which they raised nearly $160 million from close to 200 investors in less than two years. The defendants used the investor funds to purchase (fraudulent) discounted legal settlements from Scott Rothstein (former Florida attorney). Rothstein then used the investor funds to make Ponzi...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - May 25th, 2012
(May 2012)
SEC Charges Northern California Fund Manager in $60 Million Scheme
May 24, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22375)
The SEC charged John A. Geringer with running a $60 million Ponzi scheme. In Geringer's management of the GLR Growth Fund, he allegedly misrepresented the fund's historical returns -- double-digit annually -- in the marketing materials and then used new investor funds to finance the returns current investors purportedly realized. Geringer went so far as to produce account statements...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - May 18th, 2012
(May 2012)
SEC Charges US Perpetrators in $35 Million International Boiler Room Scheme
May 16, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22370)
The SEC filed charges this week against Nicholas Louis Geranio, Keith Michael Field, The Good One, Inc. and Kaleidoscope Real Estate, Inc. for their roles in an international boiler room scheme which ran from April 2007 to October 2009 and raised approximately $35 million in proceeds. Geranio allegedly "organized eight U.S. Issuers, installed management (including Field),...
SEC Investigation into Largest Non-Traded REIT May Be A Sign of Things To Come
(May 2012)
As discussed in the financial press (see articles from InvestmentNews and Wall Street Journal) and the company's latest quarterly reports, Inland American Real Estate Trust is the subject of an ongoing SEC investigation. The SEC probe is determining whether the company incurred in any violations of the federal securities laws with regards to its fees, company organization structure, distributions paid to investors, and reported property impairments. Inland American is the largest non-traded...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - May 11th, 2012
(May 2012)
Georgia Doctor Consents to Order in Settlement of SEC Insider Trading Charges
May 10, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22364)
In a September 2010 complaint (Litigation Release No. 21644), the SEC alleged that Dr. Bobby V. Khan traded Sciele Pharma, Inc. (a Georgia-based pharmaceutical company) stock based upon material non-public information concerning a tender offer that was to be made by a Japanese company. Yesterday, the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia entered a consent...
The Small Price of Big Favors
(May 2012)
Yesterday the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a press release announcing that it had filed a complaint alleging Detroit officials -- including former mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick and former city treasurer Jeffrey W. Beasley -- influenced the city's pension fund investments to favor an advisor, MayfieldGentry Realty Advisors LLC, in exchange for personal gifts. This story illustrates an all too common occurrence in municipal finance. According to the SEC, Kilpatrick and Beasley...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - May 4th, 2012
(May 2012)
SEC Charges Two Former Investor Seminar Salespeople with Securities Law Violations
May 1, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22354)
This week, the SEC filed a settled civil injunctive action against Darlene Nelson Powell and Robert Eldridge -- independent contractors of Long Term-Short Term Inc. (BetterTrades) -- derived from allegations that the two made misrepresentations concerning their trading experience. As a result, legitimate investors purchased instructional courses and mentoring programs...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - April 27th, 2012
(Apr 2012)
SEC Charges Former Morgan Stanley Executive with FCPA Violations and Investment Adviser Fraud
April 25, 2012, (Litigation Release No. 22346)
Earlier this week, the SEC charged Garth R. Peterson (former managing director in Morgan Stanley's real estate investment and fund advisory business) with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The SEC alleges that "Peterson secretly arranged to have at least $1.8 million paid to himself and the Chinese official that he disguised as finder's...
Rehypothecation or Filched Fund?
(Apr 2012)
The investigation of the MF Global scandal is still ongoing. A lot of details concerning the missing customer funds haven't been revealed. At this stage there is no definitive answer as to whether MF Global blatantly transferred segregated customer funds to cover its own liquidity shortfall, or it merely used the often frowned-upon, but completely allowable practice of rehypothecation. In this blog post, I explain what rehypothecation is, as well as the controversy around it.
Rehypothecation...
