HOUSTON, June 5, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lawyers with the Securities Law Firm Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas LLP (www.stockbroker-fraud.com) are investigating claims of LPL Financial broker misconduct. Recently, multiple instances of inadequate supervision and safeguards have been discovered with LPL Financial, LLC ("LPL"). In one instance, an LPL broker named Blake Richards was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") with stealing approximately $2 million from six or more of his clients. According to the SEC, much of this money came from client retirement accounts and life insurance proceeds.
In another instance, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA"), the regulator charged with overseeing brokerage companies like LPL, levied an industry record fine against LPL for failures of LPL's email system to comply with legal requirements. Specifically, between 2007 and 2013, FINRA found that LPL's email system failed at least 35 times, resulting in 28 million emails from thousands of brokers being entirely unsupervised or reviewed, completely contrary to industry requirements. As a result, FINRA levied a fine of $7.5 million, and required LPL to set up a fund of $1.5 million to compensate investors that were impacted by the failures.
Instances like these are typically indicative of larger, widespread problems in a brokerage firm's ability or willingness to properly supervise its brokers. As a result, it is likely that many LPL customers suffered losses to their investments as a result of these and other inadequacies in LPL's supervisory systems. If you lost money investing with LPL Financial, LLC, and you believe that your broker may have acted improperly, contact the law firm Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas LLP for information about a potential claim to recover some or all of your loss.
Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas LLP has a team of attorneys, consultants and others with more than 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law. For over 20 years, we have represented thousands of investors nationwide to recover losses. The firm has represented clients in Federal and state courts and in arbitration through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the New York Stock Exchange Inc. (NYSE), the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and in private arbitration actions.