A firm customer opened an account with a mutual fund company through Longoria and,acting on Longoria’s instructions, wrote a check to an entity Longoria owned for $12,000 to fund the account. However, Longoria never funded the account and did not return the $12,000 to the customer.
An individual, non-firm customer gave Longoria a check for $5,000 to invest in what Longoria had represented was an exchange traded mutual fund whose performance was tied to that of the Standard and Poor Index. Longoria instructed the individual to make the check payable to the entity he owned. The individual completed and signed forms to open an account, but no account was opened; the individual requested copies of the forms and evidence of the investment, but Longoria did not provide these documents to the individual. The individual repeatedly asked Longoria to return his $5,000; Longoria promised to do so, and eventually gave the individual a check for $5,820, but the check was returned for insufficient funds.
Longoria failed to respond to FINRA requests for information.
A customer instructed Addington to purchase shares of a common stock in his account at Addington’s member firm. Addington placed an order to purchase the stock and instructed the customer to write a check in the amount of $34,019 made payable to an entity to pay for the purchase. However, Addington did not credit the payment to the customer’s account. As a result, Addington's brokerage firm liquidated the shares of the stock in the customer’s account for non-payment.
The customer did not promptly learn of the liquidating transaction and instructed Addington to sell the shares of the stock he believed was still in his account. The customer received a $35,500.98 check from Addington drawn on the entity’s account which Addington signed; however, when the customer deposited the check in his account, it was dishonored for insufficient funds.
After the customer called Addington and demanded that he repay him; Addington then paid the customer $35,000 in cash. In addition, Addington failed to respond to FINRA requests for information in connection with FINRA’s investigation of the allegations in the Form U5 his firm filed.
McDermott effected transactions, including checks, debits and automatic teller machine (ATM) withdrawals, in the aggregate amount of approximately $11,403 on her personal account at her member firm’s subsidiary, for which she did not have sufficient funds. McDermott opened a personal account at the subsidiary from where she began effecting transactions in amounts that she knew, or should have known, exceeded her available balance. This pattern continued, with McDermott causing transactions to occur on her account without sufficient funds until her account showed a month-ending deficit of $4,756, which included non-sufficient funds (NSF) charges of $2,130. The write-offs in the amount of $1,056 and a deposit of $3,700 reduced the deficit in her account to zero.
During a second period, McDermott again effected transactions on the account when she knew, or should have known, she had insufficient funds to cover the transactions. She failed to make a single deposit during this time to pay for the transactions, which caused her account to have a deficit of $7,049, which included NSF charges of $430.
McDermott's firm terminated her employment as a result of her conduct.
Sanford wrote personal checks against a number of her accounts maintained at her member firm while she knew, or should have known, that she had insufficient funds to cover payment on the checks. The checks were linked to her financial management account, addressed to herself and in response to or preceded by the firm’s giving her notice that she had to deposit funds to cover checks on a margin call. In almost each instance, after receiving notice that she had to deposit funds into one of her accounts, Sanford responded by writing and depositing an insufficient funds check into that account, and then writing additional checks or effecting account transfers to prevent the first check from being dishonored. Sanford wrote checks from an account she knew, or should have known, had a negative balance, and deposited them into the same account resulting in an inflated account balance; the amount of the insufficient funds checks totaled an aggregate of approximately $109,000.
Sanford willfully failed to disclose material information on her Form U4.