Senior Investment Fraud: How Can We Help
Are you a senior citizen, a Baby Boomer, or has a family member, friend or other retirement age person you know been victimized by investment abuses or investment fraud in connection with an investment account, pension plan or mortgage? Here’s FINRA’s (the Financial Regulatory Authority, formerly known as the NASD), profile of “an investment fraudster’s prime target”:
- “Self-reliant when it comes to making decisions
- Optimistic
- Above average financial knowledge
- Above average income
- College educated
- Experienced a recent health or financial setback
- Open to listening to new ideas or sales pitches”
This could be a description of you, a family member or a friend -- the typical senior investor. We have successfully represented senior citizens who fit this profile against major broker dealers and commodities firms and have helped these seniors recover their losses. Unsuspecting senior investors can fall victim to brokers who use pressure sales tactics to induce their customers to enter into investments that are unsuitable in light of the senior investor’s age, financial circumstances and risk tolerance, or investment objectives. Senior investors can also fall victim to fraud, churning of their accounts to generate commissions and misrepresentations or omissions by the broker that may distort the nature of the senior’s investment, the status of the senior’s investment or expected results.
Our experience in representing senior investors includes the following highlights:
We represented a retailer/manufacturer from Missouri, represented by the family’s Baby Boomer head, who recovered close to $9 million including a punitive damage award. The case was consolidated for trial with 12 other investors, many of them senior investors, whose combined recovery topped $46 million, a record for recoveries in NFA commodities fraud arbitration.
We successfully represented an elderly, retired engineer from Massachusetts who was induced by his broker to trade his blue chip portfolio for unsuitable investments. The broker dealer, a major financial services firm, settled before the arbitration panel ruled on the case. His settlement of well over $1 million dollars was over double the largest amount that had been awarded by an SRO arbitration panel in Boston according to news reports at that time.
We successfully settled the case of a Belgian retired furniture manufacturer, whose U.S. broker dealer induced him to purchase unsuitable investments after misrepresenting the nature of those investments, and then proceeded to churn the retiree's accounts.
By contacting us we can assist you in evaluating your own senior investment claims.
Senior Investor Tips
Two Web Sites of particular interest for Baby Boomers and senior investors provide helpful and easily understood information about how to avoid becoming a victim of senior investment fraud.They are:
“Fraud Fighting 101: Smart Tips for Older Investors”, the Web site of FINRA, the Financial Regulatory Authority, formerly known as the NASD.
http://www.finra.org/InvestorInformation/InvestorProtection/p019140
“Senior Investor Resource Center”, the Web site of NASAA, the state securities regulators.
www.nasaa.org/investor_education/senior_investor_resource_center/5025.cfm
FINRA has also issued a notice to its members aimed at protecting senior investors.
http://www.finra.org/RulesRegulation/NoticestoMembers/2007NoticestoMembers/P036815
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