The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has suspended Pinnacle Partners Financial Corporation, of San Antonio, TX, and its President, Brian K. Alfaro, for violating FINRA Temporary Cease and Desist Order prohibiting fraud in connection with the sale of certain oil and gas joint interests.

FINRA Chief of Enforcement, said, "Brian Alfaro and Pinnacle pose a serious risk to the investing public. Even after the issuance of a Temporary Cease and Desist Consent Order, Alfaro and Pinnacle continued to market oil and gas offerings through material misrepresentations, ...

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The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Wells Fargo Securities LLC consented to an $11.2 million fine in connection with the sale of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) in late 2006 and early 2007.

The SEC’ found that Wachovia Capital Markets violated the securities laws by fraudulently charging undisclosed and excessive markups in the sale of CDOs to the Zuni Indian Tribe and to an individual investor.

As part of Wachovia’s fraud, and as set forth in the SEC&rsqu...

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Investors suffering losses in Inverse and Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds may have claims against their stockbrokers or financial advisors for failure to disclose risk or perform due diligence.

An Exchange-Traded Fund ("ETF") is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks. An ETF holds assets such as stocks or bonds and trades at approximately the same price as the net asset value of its underlying assets over the course of the trading day. Most ETFs track an index, such as the S&P 500. ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low...

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Investors suffering losses in the Oppenheimer Rochester Funds may have claims against their stockbrokers or financial advisors for failure to perform due diligence.

Last year, investors in the Oppenheimer Rochester National Municipal Bond Fund collectively lost in excess of $5 billion as these shares lost more than 60% of their value.

The Oppenheimer Rochester National Municipals Fund was a highly speculative, and well known "junk bond" fund. According to the Company’s Prospectus and Morningstar, the Oppenheimer Rochester National Municipals Fund was...

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A class action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court or in which a class of defendants is sued. Class action lawsuits offer a number of advantages because they aggregate a large number of individualized claims into one representational lawsuit.

As the Securities & Exchange Commission former enforcement chief, William R. McLucas,  once said, private securities law claims, (referring to the class action bar), are the "bull work of enforcement" of the federal securities laws.

But for class acti...

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