FINRA Arbitration

Class Action Not Best Bet For GPB Investors to Recover Their Losses

August 17, 2019 | by Joe Wojciechowski

On August 2, 2019, a class action complaint was filed against GPB Capital Holdings and several affiliated entities in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Case No. 19-cv-7250. There are two named plaintiffs, one an investor in the GPB Automotive Fund, there other an investor in the GPB Holdings Fund II. The class action is actually quite limited in scope, broadly alleging that the investors have been damaged by GPB Capital because the funds have collectively failed to provide audited financial statements as required by the private offering memoranda and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The class action complaint has two counts: breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. There are no allegations of fraud or other misconduct and the complaint parrots many of the published claims about GPB, including many of the same facts identified on this blog before.

Investors should not be lulled into complacency by the filing of this class action complaint, as if it will be from where their investment losses are recovered. Investors need to continue to honestly assess their individual situations and determine whether their financial advisors or brokers sold them these funds based on misrepresentations or omissions of material fact. Many of the GPB investors represented by Stoltmann Law Offices have made allegations of unsuitability and breach of fiduciary duty against the brokerage firm responsible for selling GPB Funds to them. Those FINRA arbitration claims also include other alternative investments too, because brokers who sell private placements tend to sell more than just one. Many of our investors have serious concentration issues, with substantial percentages of their assets under management – some near 100% – in alternative, private placements including the GPB Funds.

GPB Capital utilized a network of independent brokerage firms, including Madison Avenue Securities, FSC Securities, Royal Alliance, amongst about 60 others, to sell almost $2 billion worth of their securities to retail investors. Now investors are locked into investments that have been marked down up to 70% in some instances, with no dividends being paid, and with a constant drip of negative news. Brokers are telling their clients not to worry; to sit tight; to wait it out. Advisors are telling investors this will “blow over” and that GPB will be paying dividends again in no time. These “lulling” statements should not be relied on by investors. Brokers and advisors have no more information about what is happening inside GPB Capital than the investors do at this point, and any statement or advice from a broker to “hold tight” is self-serving. Investors should ask their brokers 1) how much money in commissions they were paid to sell them GPB Funds; and 2) ask to see the due diligence file the broker created on GPB prior to selling it. The responses will not be friendly.

Crypto Red Flags And Scams Abound For Burned Investors

August 13, 2019 | by Stoltmann Law Offices

Crypto related currencies have been called a lot of things. The next big thing. A bright, shiny object. When top financial regulators say they aren’t comfortable that they haven’t learned about the full dangers of crypto, you’re wise to be wary too. Investment promoters often try to convince hungry investors they can turn hot topics of the day from oil and gas fracking to self-driving cars into wealth.

But often the only wealth that surfaces from their drumbeat is an abundant pile of victims. Crypto crooks stole over $4 billion from investors this year, the blockchain consulting firm CipherTrace warned in a new study. Even the sophisticated are vulnerable and increasingly so.

“Exchanges and users are facing a greater sophistication in the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) cybercriminals are using to target the cryptocurrency space. In the case of exchange robberies, hackers have developed advanced methods to overcome even the current “best practice” security in place at the more vigilant exchanges,” CipherTrace cautioned.

News Coverage on FSC Brokers Craig Accardo and Frank Briseno III

August 12, 2019 | by Stoltmann Law Offices

Thirty New Orleans area investors have learned a lesson painfully you don’t have to. Investor fraud isn’t always a flood. It can go drip-drip-drip. The 30 have joined together to file a claim with a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel charging that their brokers tried to line their pockets with high commissions from high-risk securities instead of following the investors’ directions to put their money in low-risk assets.

One of the investments Craig Accardo and Frank Briseno III put the burned investors money into was a real estate investment trust that has lost more than half its value in a year and is being sued on claims it mislead investors. The brokers affiliated with FSC Securities Corporation frittered away the nest eggs slowly, one of the accusers, Gordon Dalrymple told Nola.com, a New Orleans news website.

“When I started drawing on it, as time went on, I noticed that the principal kept going down,” said the 70-year-old retired investor who worked in management for the technology firm Zedi. On the advice of a former boss who was also a friend, Darylmple entrusted nearly half of a million dollars from his 401 (k) with Accardo and Briseno III with FSC Securities who he now is charging with squandering the money in grossly unsuitable investment recommendations. A lawyer called the alleged fraud: “A long con, this kind of misconduct can be hard to detect, but the reverberations can linger.”