The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s award-winning business reporter and columnist, Teresa Dixon Murray, has written a timely article prominently featuring extensive comments from one of our team members, the inimitable Hugh Berkson. The article, which links to our Stockmarketloss.com website, reminds investors to be particularly watchful for fraud and scam investments when the financial markets and …
Hugh Berkson discusses his shifts in attitude and expectations toward marketing his investor legal practice. Traditionally relying on word of mouth, he lost potential clients to other firms. Over the next five years, he increased his marketing efforts and clientele, eventually creating stockmarketloss.com as a blogging and information site.
Over the past several years, we’ve handled many customer cases against investment firm Sanders Morris Harris, Inc. arising from sales activities at its Solon/Beachwood branch office in suburban Cleveland, OH. Last month, FINRA announced sanctions against SMH and two of the registered principals at that office, based upon both their failure to properly supervise a broker who …
If you’re a holder of VelocityShares 2x Long VIX Short Term Exchange Traded Notes (“TVIX”), managed by Credit Suisse Group AG, you’re all too aware that TVIX recently plunged off a cliff. But you may not have understood exactly what you owned, how it was supposed to work, or how risky it could be. The …
We recently told you about the insurance agent who was convicted and sentenced to jail for selling an illiquid Allianz equity indexed annuity to an 83-year old woman who showed signs of dementia. The focus of this story has been on the agent’s criminal conviction, but agents get such huge commissions for selling these products …
By now, the NYT op-ed resignation letter of Greg Smith, a former Goldman Sachs employee, has made the rounds on Twitter and the Blogosphere. In an act of professional suicide, Smith has scathingly indicted Goldman for its rancid ethics, declaring that “the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it,” …
Welcome to the Stockmarketloss Blog, a resource brought to you by McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman, a Cleveland, OH law firm that maintains a variety of specialized practice groups. This blog is a creation of the firm’s Investor Rights group, which conducts a nationwide arbitration and litigation practice representing investors who have been abused, misled, …
McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman is pleased to announce the unveiling of our brand spankin’ newish, refreshed, and rebooted Stockmarketloss.com web site. Our goal was to provide more updated and relevant content in an easier to navigate forum. But even though the website is new, the mission hasn’t changed. Our securities lawyers still advocate exclusively …
Ameriprise Financial announced at its 2011 shareholders meeting that they were selling their brokerage unit, Securities America, which was under investigation for selling worthless private placements in two bankrupt companies: Medical Capital and Provident Shale. Attorney Hugh Berkson represents Securities America customers in a 150 million dollar arbitration case.
Attorneys Hugh Berkson and Joe Peiffer announce that Securities America has agreed to pay $150 million dollars to settle a class action lawsuit. This agreement came after a federal judge rejected a $21 million dollar proposal last month. The victims lost a total of $400 million in this scheme.
A federal judge rejected a 21 million dollar settlement against Securities America. The lead plaintiff’s attorney in the class action lawsuit wanted the deal to go through as he felt it best for the defrauded investors. Hugh Berkson disagreed, believing that Securities America could pay more to victims of their fraud.
Lawsuits filed against Securities America claim fraud for its lack of risk disclosure with regard to the sale of $700 million dollars in private-placement Medical Capital notes. Massachusetts regulators challenge Securities America’s assertion that it was Medical Capital’s responsibility to disclose risk issues. Attorney Jay Salamon, quoted in article above, calls Securities America’s position preposterous.
An author maintains that while financial fraud claims increase during poor economic times this doesn’t mean that more fraud is occurring. Hugh Berkson challenged that assertion, explaining that financial salespeople may seek out less beneficial and even fraudulent products to sell to maintain their own revenue streams.
Three changes are deemed necessary to fix the broken securities arbitration system: improve the quality of the arbitrators, impose sanctions for procedural abuses, and reduce time and cost of the process. Unfortunately, these changes are unlikely to occur given the expected merger of the NSE and the NASD. Hugh Berson offers his thoughts in the …
A proposed NASD rule would grant parties in securities arbitrations the right to demand written explanations of arbitration panel decisions. While the change could potentially provide a further understanding of seemingly arbitrary awards and increase investor confidence, attorney Jay Salamon voices his concern, in the above article, that brokerages will use the documents to file costly …
