Sometimes it takes awhile to learn a lesson. Just ask David Lerner. With his firm, David Lerner Associates, already facing a disciplinary complaint by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for misleading investors and selling shares in illiquid real estate investment trusts (REITs) to unsophisticated and elderly customers, owner David Lerner apparently continued to improperly pitch the products.

FINRA is now taking aim at Lerner personally. In an amended filing, the regulator added new allegations to the complaint it previously filed in May 2011 against Lerner’s firm. As reported on Jan. 30 by Reuters, FINRA’s latest complaint focuses on statements Lerner allegedly made to investors following the regulator’s actions against his company this past summer.

In the amended complaint, FINRA states that Lerner sent letters to more than 50,000 customers in July 2011 to “counter negative press” regarding FINRA’s action. That action concerned sales of Lerner’s Apple REITs and, specifically, the fact that Lerner’s firm reportedly mislead investors with information that failed to show distributions of the REITs exceeded income and were financed by debt.

In the letter that Lerner later issued to customers, FINRA says he also discussed a possible opportunity for Apple REIT shareholders to participate in a sale or listing on a national exchange as a way to dispose of their shares at a reasonable price.

FINRA says Lerner further made misleading, exaggerated statements to investors during a seminar that his brokerage firm hosted, including statements suggesting that closed REITs were a potential “gold mine.”

The case against Lerner and his Apple REITs has put non-traded REITs in general on shaky ground with broker/dealers throughout the country.  In October 2011, FINRA issued an investor alert about non-traded REIT investments, calling attention to the inconsistent dividends, illiquidity and inaccurate valuations associated with the products.

Insider trading, in which trades are made based on certain “inside” knowledge or information about a major corporate happening, is a crime – and one that cheats everyone. A Sept. 25 article in Investment News describes what happens when insider trading occurs and why the perpetrators involved should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

“Every owner of shares manipulated by insider trading is a victim,” the article says. “In addition to direct investors, the victims of insider trading are the thousands, if not millions, of 401(k) plan participants, mutual fund shareholders and bank trust customers who received lower prices for their shares because a few cheaters had inside information.”

Several individuals accused of insider trading are gearing up to face their sentences. One of them is hedge-fund titan Raj Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group LLC, was convicted on May 14 of conducting the world’s biggest insider-trading scheme. His sentencing is set for Oct. 13. The government, hoping to send an loud and clear message that illegal insider trading will not be tolerated, is asking the judge in the case to sentence Rajaratnam to 20 to 24 years in jail.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued subpoenas to hedge funds and other financial firms as it investigates possible insider trading prior to the downgrading of the U.S. government’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s.

Insider trading allows people like Rajaratnam to profit from non-public information. In making their profits, insider traders are slowly but surely undermining the faith and trust that investors place in the financial markets. And that harms all of us.

Lured by false promises of big yields and high returns, investors often make the mistake of putting their money into one investment basket – one that contains risky and obscure financial products that fail to live up to their hype.

On July 25, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued an Investor Alert on this very subject. In the alert, FINRA offers insight on why more investors are “chasing returns,” meaning they are putting their assets into more and more riskier investments.

Many investors do not realize they could be taking on more risk if they invest in products with higher returns, FINRA says. Those investments include non-traded real estate investment trust (REITs), high-yield bonds, structured products and floating-rate loan funds.

Before investors consider moving their assets to another investment, FINRA suggests that they ask themselves the following questions:

• Does the higher return from the investment come with increased risk? In most cases, the answer is “yes,” FINRA says.
• Do you thoroughly understand how the investment operates? A number of investments come with an unwanted surprise, such illiquidity, exit fees, loss of principal or the return of the investment in a form other than cash.
• Are there costs and fees associated with the new investment? Not only is the promise of higher return associated with greater risk, but some of these investments have higher costs, as well.
• Is the product callable? A callable investment means that after a period of time, the issuer can redeem the investment prior to the investment reaching maturity.
• Could the new investment be fraudulent? Legitimate investments that promise returns of 30, 50 or even 100% annually without any risk to your principal exist only in fantasy land. To confirm the status of an individual broker or firm, use FINRA’s BrokerCheck. To check the status of an investment adviser or firm, use the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database.

The bottom line: It’s important to read and understand the fine print about an investment before deciding to put your money into it. In almost every instance, a product that promises high yields and returns also comes with considerably more risk – and a greater potential for financial loss.

To learn more about various investments that investors are turning to as a way to “chase returns,” go to tiny.cc/z6kty.

Non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) known as Apple REITs are facing a mountain of legal complaints by investors and regulators alike. In June, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) filed a disciplinary action against broker/dealer David Lerner Associates in connection to the investments.

For months, clients of Lerner have been receiving account statements showing the value of several Apple REITs as $11 each. Unfortunately, those account statements failed to reveal the true problems behind the investments.

As reported June 2 by the New York Times, Apple REIT No. 8 had to make mortgage payments on four hotels it owns, and may have to surrender the properties to the lenders. Yet, it had not written down the values of those hotels on its financial statements.

In its disciplinary action against Lerner, FINRA accuses the company of misleading investors in selling the current Apple REIT, No. 10. It said Lerner was “targeting unsophisticated and elderly customers with unsuitable sales of this illiquid security” and misled them regarding the record of earlier Apple REITs. FINRA further stated that shares were sold to customers for whom such risky investments were unsuitable; it also claims there was deception in the way the shares were marketed.

In 2009, FINRA issued a notice to broker/dealers on non-traded REITs and the fact that they were being listed at original value long after the values should have been changed. As a result, amendments were made requiring the investments to be valued based on information no more than 18 months old.

One day following FINRA’s most recent action against Lerner, an investment management company announced a tender offer to buy up to 5% of the outstanding Apple No. 8 shares. The offer wasn’t for $11, however. It was for $3.

Non-traded REITs are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but they are not publicly traded. The Apple REITs will repurchase a small number of shares each year, but most investors must wait five years or more to get their money back. That happens when the REIT either liquidates or begins to trade publicly.

In 2010, sales of non-traded REIT shares by sponsors raised $8.3 billion from investors, according to figures compiled by Blue Vault Partners, a research firm.

Shares of non-traded REITs are sold by broker/dealers like Lerner, which gets big commissions from the sales. In the case of the Apple REITs, 10% of the purchase price went to Lerner, according to the New York Times story. Meanwhile, Glade M. Knight, chief executive of the Apple REITs, collected a 2% commission for every hotel purchased by the REIT. That’s on top of the advisory fees he was paid. He can collect another 2% when the hotels are sold.

David Lerner Associates gets the majority of its income from selling the Apple REITs.

If you are an investor in the Apple REITs through David Lerner Associates, please contact us to tell your story.

An Apple REIT a day is keeping investors at bay. With apologies to the childhood saying, investors who own shares in Apple Real Estate Investment Trusts are finding out their investments may be worth far less than they ever imagined.

A disciplinary complaint was filed last month by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) against David Lerner Associates, the sole brokerage that sells Apple REIT shares. In its complaint, FINRA says that Lerner failed to comply with the industry’s stringent due-diligence standards when it sold shares in the $2 billion Apple REIT 10, which launched in January.

FINRA goes on to say that Lerner targeted unsophisticated and elderly customers to buy Apple 10 shares. Moreover, FINRA says Lerner cited the distributions of previous Apple REIT companies on its Web site but failed to reveal that many of the distribution rates had dropped and distributions had exceeded funds from operations at Apple REITs 6 through 9.

As reported July 20 by the Virginia Business Journal, those distributions totaled $118.1 million in 2010 at Apple REIT Nine, while its funds from operations totaled only $60.2 million.

FINRA also stated in its complaint against Lerner that shares in Apple REITs 6 through 9 had been valued at $11 a share since their initial offerings. However, after a California firm made a tender offer of $3 a share for shares of Apple REITs 7 and 8 in June, the Apple REITs revised the $11 figure – stating in a filing that the shares had a book value of $7.57 each.

Glade M. Knight is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple REIT Cos. His company has issued nearly $6.8 billion in securities to about 122,600 customers, according FINRA. Both Knight and Apple REIT Cos. have been named in at least two class action lawsuits filed in June 2011 against David Lerner Associates.

If you are an investor in the Apple REITs through David Lerner Associates, please contact us to tell your story.

Clients of David Lerner Associates who own shares in non-traded REITs created by Apple REIT Cos. are not happy campers these days. When their account statements arrived in the mail last month, the value of their Apple REIT shares was designated as “not priced.”

The wording comes as a shock because for years shares of the non-traded REIT were listed at $11. As reported July 17 by Investment News, David Lerner continued to list the same price even after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) instructed broker/dealers in 2009 to adjust prices on the investments more frequently.

Moreover, FINRA prohibited broker/dealers from using information more than 18 months old to estimate the value of a non-traded REIT.

FINRA filed a complaint against David Lerner in May, alleging that the firm has misled investors, as well as marketed unsuitable investment products to them.

In total, David Lerner has recommended and sold nearly $6.8 billion in Apple REIT shares since 1992, according to FINRA’s records.

A broker/dealer that switches a security’s value to “not priced” isn’t unheard of, but it is far from the norm, attorneys say.

“The price of $11 per share is most likely a misrepresentation of its true value, which is almost impossible to ascertain and price,” said Phil Aidikoff, a plaintiff’s attorney who has been following the David Lerner case but has no investors with the firm as clients in the Investment News article.

“Issues of pricing have been going on for a long time in the securities business,” Aidikoff said.

FINRAs complaint against David Lerner has sparked new concerns among broker/dealers about the sales of illiquid investments such as non-traded REITs and private placements.

In the wake of soured private placement deals in Medical Capital Holdings and Provident Royalties – as well as other investments gone bad at the hands of rogue brokers – the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is putting more information about its disciplinary actions online for investors and others to view.

Launched May 17, the new Disciplinary Actions Online database provides access to FINRA complaints filed against firms and individual brokers, settlement agreements and decisions by FINRA arbitration panels. In the past, anyone wanting information about those items had to contact FINRA directly.

The new and improved database will provide enhanced functionality, allowing users to conduct searches by broker or firm name, timeframe, key words and case numbers.

The database also includes pending complaints that FINRA has filed against firms and brokers. As reported May 18 by Investment News, this feature alone could make pending complaints easier to find, compared to the multistep process needed to locate pending actions disclosed on FINRA’s BrokerCheck system.

Beginning June 15, FINRA’s monthly disciplinary action summaries will contain links to corresponding documents in the new disciplinary database.

Top executives of various broker/dealers that sold private placements in Medical Capital Holdings and Provident Royalties have been fined and sanctioned by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Among the executives cited for failing to conduct a reasonable investigation of private placement sales offered by Medical Capital Holdings and/or Provident Royalties:

· Robert Vollbrecht, Workman Securities’ former President. Vollbrecht was barred in any principal capacity and fined $10,000.

· Timothy Cullum, former Chief Executive Officer, and Steven Burks, former President of Cullum & Burks Securities of Dallas, Texas, a now-defunct firm. Both men were each suspended in any principal capacity for six months and fined $10,000.

· Jeffrey Lindsey and Bradley Wells, two former executives with Capital Financial Services. Lindsey and Wells have been suspended for six months in any principal capacity and fined $10,000.

· Jay Lynn Thacker, former Chief Compliance Officer for Meadowbrook Securities, LLC (aka Investlinc Securities, LLC). Thacker was suspended for six months in any principal capacity and fined $10,000.

· David William Dube, former Owner, President, Chief Compliance Officer and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Compliance Officer of (now-defunct) Peak Securities Corporation. Dube was barred for failing to conduct adequate due diligence, as well as a failure as AML Compliance Officer to detect, investigate and report numerous suspicious transactions in 10 customer accounts where “red flags” existed.

According to FINRA, without performing proper due diligence, the broker/dealers that sold the private placements could not identify and understand the inherent risks of the offerings. Moreover, the sanctioned principals did not have reasonable grounds to allow the firms’ registered representatives to continue selling the offerings despite the red flags that existed regarding the private placements.

On Jan. 25, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Merrill Lynch with civil securities fraud for “misusing customer order information” to place proprietary trades and for charging customers undisclosed trading fees.

Without admitting or denying the charges, Merrill has agreed to pay a $10 million fine and consent to a cease-and-desist order.

According to the SEC, the infractions occurred between 2003 and 2005 on Merrill Lynch’s proprietary equity strategy desk, which traded for the firm’s benefit and had nothing to do with executing customer orders. Merrill’s trading desk was located on its main equity trading floor in New York, where market makers received and executed customer orders.

The SEC says Merrill’s equity strategy traders had access to institutional customer orders and used that access to place trades on Merrill’s behalf after the customer trades were made. The SEC went on to say that this misuse of information was contrary to claims by Merrill Lynch to customers that orders would be maintained on a strict need-to-know basis.

“Investors have the right to expect that their brokers won’t misuse their order information,” said Scott W. Friestad, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The conduct here was clearly inappropriate. Merrill’s proprietary traders had improper access to information about the firm’s customer orders, and misused it to place trades on the firm’s behalf.”

The SEC’s order also found that between 2002 and 2007 Merrill had agreements with certain institutional and high net-worth customers that Merrill would only charge a commission equivalent for executing riskless principal trades. However, in some instances, Merrill also charged customers undisclosed mark-ups and mark-downs by filling customer orders at prices less favorable to the customer than the prices at which Merrill purchased or sold the securities in the market.

Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch in 2009 in a $20 billion deal forged with the help of government bailout dollars during the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged three New York investment firms – West End Financial Advisors LLC, West End Capital Management LLC, Sentinel Investment Management Corp. – and four senior officers – William Landberg, Kevin Kramer, Steven Gould and Janis Barsuk – of conning investors into believing their money was invested in stable, safe investments designed to provide steady streams of income. In reality, West End was in the throes of a deepening financial crisis stemming from failed investment strategies.

The misconduct reportedly occurred from at least January 2008 to May 2009, the SEC says.

“The investment advisers here grossly abused the trust of their clients,” said George S. Canellos, Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office. “They misappropriated and commingled their clients’ assets and sustained the illusion of a viable and successful business through a range of false representations.”

David Rosenfeld, Associate Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office, added, “West End raised millions from investors by touting false positive returns while concealing fraudulent bank loans, cash flow problems, and the misappropriation of investor assets.”

In its complaint, the SEC alleges that Landberg used substantial amounts of fraudulently obtained bank loans to make distributions to certain West End fund investors, thereby creating the false impression that West End’s investments were performing well. During the same period, Landberg also misappropriated at least $1.5 million for himself and his family. Landberg’s wife, Louise Crandall, and their family partnership are named as relief defendants in the SEC’s complaint.

The SEC further alleges that Gould and Barsuk knew, or were reckless in not knowing, that Landberg was defrauding the bank that provided loans to a West End fund by misusing funds in a related interest reserve account. Both officers nevertheless participated in the fraud by facilitating Landberg’s misappropriations from that account, the SEC says.

The SEC also alleges that Gould conceived and used improper accounting methods to conceal aspects of the fraud, as well as issued account statements to investors showing false investment returns. Barsuk facilitated Landberg’s uses of investor money to cover his personal obligations.

Similarly, Kramer knew, or was reckless in not knowing, that West End faced severe financial problems and had difficulty obtaining sufficient financing to sustain its investment strategy. Kramer failed to disclose those material facts to investors as he continued to market the funds to new and existing investors through April 2009.