(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a former registered representative with defrauding long-standing brokerage customers in an $8 million investment scam. <\/p>\n
According to the SEC\u2019s complaint, Steven Pagartanis, who was affiliated with a registered broker-dealer, told some investors \u2013 including retirees who had been Pagartanis\u2019s customers for many years \u2013 that he would invest their funds in either a publicly-traded or private land development company. He promised that the funds would be safe and also promised guaranteed monthly interest payments on the investments. At Pagartanis\u2019s direction, his investors wrote checks payable to a similarly-named entity that was secretly controlled by Pagartanis. In all, the customers invested approximately $8 million, which Pagartanis used to pay personal expenses and make the guaranteed \u201cinterest\u201d payments to his customers. To conceal the scam, which unraveled earlier this year when Pagartanis stopped making the so-called interest payments to customers, Pagartanis created fictitious account statements reflecting ownership interests in the land development companies. <\/p>\n
The Suffolk County District Attorney\u2019s Office today filed criminal charges against Pagartanis.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of the alleged scam, Pagartanis preyed on his customers\u2019 trust, duping them to write checks payable to his own entity,\u201d said Marc P. Berger, Director of the SEC\u2019s New York Regional Office. \u201cRegardless of how long investors have worked with their brokers, they should always confirm that recommended investments are approved for sale by their brokerage firm before transferring funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) and the Division of Enforcement\u2019s Retail Strategy Task Force (RSTF) today issued an Investor Alert educating investors about warning signs that a broker may be offering investments outside of the broker\u2019s firm. According to the alert, even if you are investing through a broker you have known for years, you should be cautious if your broker asks you to make out a check or to wire money to an individual or to a different firm. OIEA and RSTF\u2019s ongoing collaboration, including through Investor Alerts and other deterrence and detection initiatives, aims to help prevent frauds targeting retail investors.<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s complaint, filed in federal district court in Brooklyn, charges Pagartanis with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC is seeking a judgment ordering Pagartanis to disgorge his allegedly ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, and to pay financial penalties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a former registered representative with defrauding long-standing brokerage customers in an $8 million investment scam. According to the SEC\u2019s complaint, Steven Pagartanis, who was affiliated with a registered broker-dealer, told some investors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,16048,16047],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-networks-press-releases","category-hedgeco-news","category-hedgecovest-news","category-insider-trading-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64081,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64080\/revisions\/64081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}