Real Estate Investment Trusts or REITs are companies, which own and manage income-producing property (e.g.hotels, hospitals, & office buildings) or are involved in real estate financing. REITs are either publically traded, non-exchange traded, or privately traded. REITs provide investors with real estate exposure, but unlike other real estate investments, REITs are often entirely illiquid. REIT companies must distribute at least 90% of taxable income; however, in instances where income does not meet distribution demand, REITs often resort to paying distributions out of borrowed money...

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Until recently, Clifford Jagodzinski worked at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as a Complex Risk Officer. Mr. Jagodzinski’s job duties included identifying potential compliance risk issues and enforcing securities law violations.

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court, as part of his officical duties, Mr. Jagodzinski detected that a particular broker, Harvey B. Kadden, was flipping preferred securities in a...

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Brookstone Securities Inc. of Lakeland, Fla., was fined $1 million after a hearing panel of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) found the broker-dealer made fraudulent sales of collateralized mortgage obligations to elderly, unsophisticated investors.

Antony L. Turbeville, the firm's owner and former CEO, and Christopher Kline, one of its brokers, were also found to have engaged in the fraudulent sales, according to the 71...

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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has suspended Andrew J. Aragona, a former broker with Newbridge Securities Corp., from associating with any FINRA-registered firm in any capacity for one year for unsuitably recommending that an elderly customer switch variable annuity contracts.

Per a default decision entered May 2, Aragona was also fined $15,000, and ordered to disgorge the $123,500 he made in commissions from his unsuitable reco...

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In October 2010, Nicholas J. Guiliano, Esquire of the Guiliano Law Firm, P.C. in Philadelphia and Jeffrey Sonn of Sonn & Erez in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida filed nine actions in arbitration before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority against Royal Alliance, Inc. and several of its former agents, in connection with the sale of the unregistered securities of the Draseena Funds Group, in what was later determined to be a Ponzi scheme.

Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. is a registered securities broker-dealer which, among other things, conducts its securities business throug...

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