Financial professionals handling compliance keep abreast with changes in the regulatory landscape to effectively allocate resources. At the start of each year, regulatory agencies Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission publish their priorities. FINRA’s recently released Risk Monitoring and Examination Priorities Letter states emerging issues as…
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, there has been a recent trend at big brokerages of shifting the power from the headquarters to brokers and branch managers. Apparently big brokerages like Bank Of America, UBS Group, and Merrill Lynch are “unleashing” their brokers and moving power closer to the…
Patrick Churchville of Rhode Island has been accused of orchestrating a $21 million Ponzi scheme and was recently sentenced to 7 years in prison by a federal judge, according to an Investment News report. Mr. Churchville is the owner and president of ClearPath Wealth Management and according to SEC’s complaint,…
We frequently represent individuals who have received an SEC Subpoena, and often the first question asked is, “Why did I get this subpoena? I did nothing wrong.” The SEC investigates many kinds of misconduct, and the people they seek information and documents from (through the use of Subpoenas) very often are…
When you receive an SEC subpoena, one of the first things that you want to know is “how long before this is over?” While that is an important question, it unfortunately is not one that has a definite answer. Frequently, the time to produce materials will range from weeks to…
The securities fraud attorneys at Malecki Law are interested in hearing from investors who have complaints against stockbroker Solomon David Krispeal. Since January 2016, Mr. Krispeal has been employed and registered with PHX Financial, Inc., a Hauppauge, New York broker-dealer, according to his publicly available BrokerCheck, as maintained by the…
According to publicly available BrokerCheck records, James Carolan Speno (CRD#431912), a New York based securities broker, formerly associated with Morgan Stanley, was recently barred by FINRA. Attorneys at Malecki Law are interested in hearing from investors who have complaints against James Speno. Mr. Speno has spent over 45 years as…
BlackRock has been charged by the SEC with removing whistleblower incentives in their separation agreements with employees, per the SEC. According to the Commission, BlackRock’s charges stemmed from allegations that the company forced employees to waive their ability to obtain whistleblower awards. Provisions such as those in Dodd-Frank provide for…
Ms. Malecki was a panelist recently at the Practising Law Institute’s (PLI) Securities Arbitration 2016 all-day seminar, where she spoke about ethical and other issues in securities arbitration. Ms. Malecki has spoken at PLI consistently for many years. Her panel Practicum on Experts and Closings focused on expert witnesses and…
According to published materials, two years ago the SEC started investigating, American Realty Capital Properties Inc (ARCP) and its executives, for allegedly overstating financial results and deliberate concealment of financial mistakes, which rattled the REIT brokerage empire built by Nicholas Schorsch. After investigations, the SEC reported that it recently brought…