This week, the SEC dealt with some accounting fraud. In the two decades following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it’s been (relatively) rare, with executives at public companies choosing to get out in front of wrongdoing to avoid criminal charges and a lot of companies choosing to stay private rather than get caught up in the quarterly earnings chase
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Politicians like to sputter “but what about Chicago?” whenever there’s an outbreak of gun violence or political corruption in their community. The city looms large for its shootings (outsized because of our population) and its sleazy politicians, not for its art museums or Nobel Prize winners. But here’s the thing: The Art Institute of Chicago is an amazing museum. Any town can have corrupt politicians
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This week, the SEC alleged that the Detroit-based EIA All Weather Alpha Fund I was actually a Ponzi scheme. The fund’s manager is charged with falsifying just about everything involved with the fund, from its performance to its audit statements. When people used this information to make investments, the SEC says that the money was instead used to pay back older investors or pay the fund manager’s personal expenses
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Seemingly every market meltdown is followed by news of a fund blowing up and a spectacular fraud. The market slid when the COVID lockdowns began. Because the decline was short-lived, there wasn’t much malfeasance uncovered. Allianz managed to have a blow up and a fraud in one fund, and this week, the German insurer settled with the SEC. It paid $1 billion in fines and $5 billion in restitution
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This week, the SEC charged a Florida firm, Synergy Settlement Services, and two of its principals with misappropriating client funds. What makes this especially awful is that the firm specialized in managing money for people with disabilities who had received funds from a personal injury settlement
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