MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shepherd, Smith, Edwards, & Kantas (“SSEK Law Firm”) recently filed a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration claim against Kestra Investment Services, Inc. (“Kestra”) on behalf of an investor for retirement losses that she suffered while a client of now-former broker, James Daughtry (“Daughtry”). Daughtry was fired from his firm earlier this year around the same time that FINRA barred him indefinitely from working in the industry after he refused to testify in the probe into allegations that he engaged in potentially fraudulent and unauthorized transactions in customers’ accounts.
According to the claim, Claimant, a semi-retiree and inexperienced investor, entrusted Daughtry to manage her individual retirement account (IRA) and keep her money safe. However, instead of rolling the retirement account over to Kestra, her life savings ended up at Graysail, a now defunct IRA that was housed at an administrative firm known as Equity Trust. Forged documents also caused this investor to lend nearly all of her assets to an entity called Small World Capital. Meanwhile, this investor knew nothing about these transactions.
All of this happened during Daughtry’s time as a Kestra broker, although marketing materials referred to his office as The Daughtry Group. As a result, Kestra had a duty to properly supervise him and his activities, ensuring the suitability of investments and trading activities, preventing misappropriation, and checking for unapproved outside business activities while protecting all of its customers from fraud and negligence. Yet because Daughtry sold away a product that Kestra had not approved, violating the firm’s and FINRA’s rules, this retiree investor lost the bulk of her retirement savings.
If you were a client of James Daughtry or any other advisor from Kestra Investment Services and suffered significant investment losses, contact SSEK Law Firm for a free, no obligation evaluation of your account. All communications will be kept strictly confidential. We have a team of attorneys, consultants and staff with more than 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law. For more than two decades, our firm has represented thousands of investors nationwide to recover losses.
Contact Info: 800-259-9010
Kirk Smith: ksmith@sseklaw.com
Sam Edwards: sedwards@sseklaw.com