Local Law Blogs

Intelligent Investing: Go to the FBI Cold

Stark & Stark Securities group Shareholder, Bill Singer, is the author of a weekly column, Intelligent Investing, for Forbes.com. The column focuses on Wall Street regulatory developments and discusses regulation from the individual investor's point of view. Mr. Singer authored the October 23, 2009 article, Go To The FBI Cold, as part of his Intelligent Investing series. The article discusses a recent trend in trading platform scams, which are designed to lure investors into funding high-yield investment plans or alternative investments. Though these plans claim to yield high returns, in most cases, they are simply fraudulent schemes. In light of his findings, Mr. Singer notified the Securities & Exchange Commission in hopes of preventing another Madoff fiasco.

Although the information provided could assist in putting an end to these scams, the SEC was unresponsive for weeks and did little to use the information to prevent investors from losing millions. Mr. Singer states that the SEC's history of complacent and untimely responses was responsible for the missed opportunity to end Madoff's 16-year long Ponzi scheme and this most recent example of their inability to provide a timely response will only discourage whistleblowers from aiding in the prevention of future schemes from occurring.

You can read Mr. Singer's full article online here.

Full post as published by New Jersey Law Blog on November 02, 2009 (boomark / email).