Investor Lawyers Blog

The State of Colorado has reportedly indicted former LPL financial advisor Sonya D. Camarco on six counts of securities fraud and seven counts of theft for allegedly diverting more than $850,000 in customer money for her personal use between January 2013 and May. Ms. Camarco reportedly was terminated by LPL Financial in August 2017for “depositing…

Investors in VGTel, Inc. (“VGTel”) (OTC PINK: VGTL) may be able to recover their losses through initiating a securities arbitration proceeding with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) if they were sold VGTel shares via misrepresentations or if a stockbroker or financial advisor made an unsuitable recommendation to purchase VGTel shares. VGTel has been the…

Summit Healthcare REIT Inc. (“Summit”), a publicly registered non-traded real estate investment trust, has recommended to shareholders that they reject a third-party tender offer by MacKenzie Realty Capital to purchase shares for $1.34 a share. The REIT estimates its net asset value per share as $2.53, and therefore says that the $1.34 a share offer…

Breitburn Energy Partners, L.P. (“Breitburn”) is an independent oil and gas exploration company, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, with a corporate office in Houston, TX. Structured as a master limited partnership (“MLP”), Breitburn and its subsidiaries are engaged in the acquisition, exploitation, and development of properties in the United States for purposes of oil and…

On July 16, 2017, the Wall Street Journal published an article – From $2 Billion to Zero: A Private-Equity Fund Goes Bust in the Oil Patch – discussing the financial distress besetting Houston based EnerVest Ltd. (“EnerVest”), a private equity firm focused on energy investments. Essentially, the article discussed how falling oil prices (to a…

Investors who have lost money in Woodbridge Wealth or in any of the Woodbridge Mortgage Funds may be able to pursue recovery of any losses through securities litigation or arbitration. Brokerage firms that sell private placements such as the Woodbridge funds must conduct due diligence on the investment before recommending it to their clients. The…

Oil and gas private placements use some of investors’ money to drill and operate oil and gas wells. Oil and gas DPPs are sponsored and managed either by investment companies or oil and gas exploration companies, each of which may suffer from its own conflicts of interests in structuring the investments due to the very…

On August 11, 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filed a Complaint against Defendants David R. Greenlee, David A. Stewart, Jr., and Richard “Ric” P. Underwood, in connection with various oil limited partnerships and joint ventures. Specifically, the SEC has alleged that the Defendants engaged in a fraudulent scheme whereby at least $15 million…

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has filed two recent enforcement actions that may signal a crackdown on variable annuity (VA) misconduct this year, continuing a 2016 trend of high fines related to VA sales in 2016. In the first disciplinary proceeding, FINRA reportedly suspended broker Cecil E. Nivens for two years and ordered the…

Recently, the North American Securities Administrators Association (“NASAA”) released a timely survey entitled ‘Seniors & Financial Exploitation’ (the “Survey”). The Survey, which was conducted among NASAA’s membership of 67 state, provincial and territorial securities administrators in all 50 States, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, in addition to the U.S. Virgin…