UBS Financial Services Inc. has agreed to settle charges brought by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, alleging that UBS failed to supervise a stockbroker who stood on both sides of multiple municipal bond trades to and from his customers’ retail accounts.

FINRA imposed a $300,000 fine and censured UBS, both with the firm’s consent.

The stockbroker engaged in the practice of high-volume, short-term transactions, called in-and-out trading, often effected through cross-trading in municipal bonds that were intended for long-term holding....

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Retail investors lucky enough to have never had trouble with stockbrokers, or the broker-dealer firms who employ them, may not be aware that the standard of conduct for these investment professionals is below that of a fiduciary.

A fiduciary is obligated to act in the best interest of the person or entity to which the fiduciary duty is owed. This includes full disclosure of possible conflicts of interest.

Thanks to the Advisers Act of 1940, investment advisors have long had to adhere to the fiduciary duties of loyalty and care, but stockbrokers and broker-dealers ha...

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Edward P. May was sentenced to 16 years in federal prison on Oct. 4 for perpetrating the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the Eastern District of Michigan, according to a statement released by U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.

The $350 million scheme eventually cost investors more than $49 million, the statement said. May was sentenced by Judge Arthur J. Tarnow of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

May pleaded guilty in April to 59 counts of mail fraud stemmi...

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Bank of America subsidiary Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. has been fined $1 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, for failure to supervise one of its stockbrokers at its branch office in San Antonio, Texas. FINRA announced the fine on Oct. 4.

Bruce Edward Hammonds, a registered representative with the firm, used a Merrill Lynch account to operate a Ponzi scheme, luring 11 people to invest more than $1 million in B&J Partnershi...

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About eight months after stockbroker Gregg M.S. Berger was indicted for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud for his role in an international pump and dump stock scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has settled failure to supervise charges against Berger’s former employer, Gilford Securities Inc. of New York.

Berger, 47, of Yonkers, N.Y., worked from 2002 through May 2006 as a retail broker at Gilford. He was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in February in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for his ro...

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