Monthly Archives: September 2018

In July 2018, one of our clients filed a FINRA arbitration against Jacksonville Beach-based financial advisor Kari Bracy and her brokerage firm, NYLife Securities, LLC regarding the sale of Future Income Payments, LLC (FIP, LLC). This sale occurred without full and fair disclosure being made to our investor about the risks associated with this investment and the amount of the commission earned.

Our firm is representing one (1) of Kari Bracy’s investors, and are urging her other FIP, LLC investors to contact us to discuss their experiences.

If Kari Bracy was your financial advisor and you invested in FIP, LLC you may have a potential claim. We are investigating claims by investors for unsuitable investing in FIP, LLC, and Kari Bracy not properly disclosing the very high risks associated with this investment.

If you are an individual or institutional investor who has any concerns about the losses experienced in FIP, LLC or any other securities, please contact us for a no-cost and no-obligation evaluation of your specific facts and circumstances. You may have a viable claim for recovery of your investment losses by filing a securities arbitration case with FINRA.

On Friday, September 14, 2018 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged an Indianapolis-based investment advisory firm and its sole owner (Tamara Steele and Steele Financial, Inc.) with selling approximately $13 million of high-risk securities to more than 120 advisory clients – many of whom are current or former teachers or other workers in public education – without disclosing that the firm and its owner stood to receive commissions of up to 18 percent from the sales.

Our firm is representing many of Tammie Steele’s and her brokerage firm’s investors, and are urging her BRS investors to contact us to describe their experiences.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that from December 2012 to October 2016, Steele Financial Inc. and Tamara Steele sold to advisory clients and other investors more than $15 million of the securities of Behavioral Recognition Systems Inc. (BRS), a private company previously charged with fraud by the SEC. All told, Steele and Steele Financial received commissions of cash and warrants from BRS that were worth more than $2.5 million. Steele and Steele Financial allegedly targeted their own advisory clients who generally did not invest in individual stocks, selling more than 120 clients approximately $13 million of BRS securities without disclosing that the defendants were receiving commissions from BRS. The complaint further alleges that the defendants created false invoices and took other steps to conceal their involvement selling BRS securities.
“We allege that Steele took advantage of her own advisory clients, including clients whom she herself described as ‘two-pension, two Social Security families,’” said Antonia Chion, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Investment advisers must put their clients’ interests ahead of their own and make full and fair disclosure of financial conflicts of interest.”

The SEC’s complaint, filed in federal district court in Indiana, charges the defendants with violating the antifraud and broker-dealer registration provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC is seeking disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with interest, penalties, and permanent injunctions.
If Tammie Steele was your financial advisor and had you invested in BRS Labs promissory notes or other BRS securities, you may have a potential claim. We are investigating claims by investors for unsuitable investing in BRS and Tammie Steele not properly disclosing the very high risks associated with this investment.

Here is an article relating to this post: https://www.ibj.com/articles/70514-sec-charges-local-investment-adviser-a-former-math-teacher-with-fraud

If you are an individual or institutional investor who has any concerns about the losses experienced in BRS Labs promissory notes or other BRS securities, please contact us for a no-cost and no-obligation evaluation of your specific facts and circumstances. You may have a viable claim for recovery of your investment losses by filing a securities arbitration case with FINRA.

The Wall Street Journal, on September 12, 2018 (“FANG Stock Play Can Fall Short”), noted that investors looking to reap the gains of highflying technology stocks while avoiding risk – through the purchase of “auto-callable” structured note products – are finding they can’t do both.

These structured notes “are often sold to mom-and-pop investors seeking higher-yielding alternatives to government debt, which is reliably safe. Offering documents say that buyers can earn fixed payouts of as much as 25% of the purchase price annually without taking on the risk of outright common-share ownership. Yet many of these FANG-linked notes fail to produce returns anywhere near that stated range, according to an analysis of securities filings by The Wall Street Journal. Many times, the upfront fees that banks collected were higher than the total returns earned by investors.”

“That is partly because the notes – dubbed ‘auto-callable’ because a rise in the stock price contractually triggers their redemption – are often redeemed in less than a year, and sometimes in as little as a month. In many cases, the auto-callable provision leads investors to earn scant returns and receive their money back long before the stated term of the investment.”

As noted in the article, auto-callable notes “are unlike common shares, which offer purchasers unlimited potential gains as well as the risk of total loss. They are also unlike U.S. Treasuries, which pay out periodic ‘coupons’ and entitle holders to full repayment at maturity. Instead, the notes offer gains up to a certain, specified threshold and protect against only certain, specified equity losses. Typically, if the linked stock or basket of stocks trades below a designated barrier – say, 75% of its initial value – when the notes mature, investors can lose a share of their principal on par with losses on the stock or basket.”

The Wall Street Journal specifically notes that Citigroup Inc., UBS Group AG and Royal Bank of Canada are among the banks this year that have issued more than $1 billion of auto-callable structured notes that are linked to one or more of the four FANG stocks: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet.

So how does the Wall Street house win with these investments? Consider just the following 2 examples that were cited in this article:

“When Citigroup sold $16.3 million of auto-callable notes tied to Amazon.com shares in mid-February, the firm advertised a 10% potential annual coupon for three years. Three months later, Amazon shares were up more than 20% – but the note was called, meaning that investors who purchased it received a total payout of 2.5%” while Citigroup “collected 3.5% in fees.”

Similarly, “in March, UBS issued a $150,000 note tied to Netflix. It paid 20.58% annually as long as shares of Netflix weren’t above the effective purchase price on monthly review dates. After one month, the stock was up 5.9%. The note was called, paying a coupon of 1.7% of the purchase price” while UBS reportedly “collected 2.7% in fees.”

If you are an individual or institutional investor who has any concerns about your auto-callable or structured product investments with any brokerage firm, please contact us for a no-cost and no-obligation evaluation of your specific facts and circumstances. You may have a viable claim for recovery of your investment losses by filing an individual securities arbitration claim with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).