Our law firm investigating potential claims against Ameriprise Financial (“Ameriprise”) and LPL Financial (“LPL”) surrounding allegations of misconduct by former Ameriprise and LPL advisor, Blake Richards (“Richards”). On May 23, 2013, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged Richards with fraud, accusing him of misappropriating approximately $2 million from at least six clients. At least two of these investors are elderly and the majority of the apparently misappropriated funds constituted retirement savings and/or life insurance proceeds from deceased spouses, according to the SEC.
According to the SEC’s complaint, “since at least 2008, on occasions when investors informed Richards that they had funds available to invest (such as from an IRA rollover or from a life insurance policy), Richards instructed the investors to write out checks to an entity called “Blake Richards Investments,” a d/b/a entity, or another d/b/a used by Richards, “BMO Investments.” Richards represented to the investors that he would invest their funds through his investment vehicle in life insurance, fixed income assets, variable annuities, or household-name stocks. Richards misappropriated much of the funds.”
From February 2007 to May 2009, Richards was registered with Ameriprise Advisor Services which was acquired by Ameriprise Financial. Thereafter, he was registered with LPL from May 2009 to May 2013. Under FINRA Rules, Ameriprise and LPL were obligated to properly supervise the activities of Richards during the time he was registered with the brokerage firms. Accordingly, Ameriprise and LPL may be liable for failing to supervise Richards’ activities while registered at the firms, and could potentially be responsible for compensating customers of Richards for their losses.
On May 21, 2013, LPL was fined $9 million for significant email system failures, which prevented LPL from accessing hundreds of millions of emails and reviewing tens of millions of other emails, and for making misstatements to FINRA during its investigation of the firm’s email failures. Interestingly, FINRA found that “over a four-year period, LPL failed to supervise 28 million “doing business as” (DBA) emails sent and received by thousands of representatives who were operating as independent contractors.” This may have included emails sent and received by Richards’ DBAs.
If you have information relating to this investigation, please contact KlaymanToskes, toll free, at 888-997-9956.
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