Grand Jury Charges San Fernando Valley Man Who Allegedly Embezzled $2.2 Million in Money and Real Estate from Elderly Victim (DOJ Release)
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/grand-jury-charges-san-fernando-valley-man-who-allegedly-embezzled-22-million-money
In the United States District Court for the Central District of California, an Indictment was filed charging Jamal Nathan "Jimmy" Dawood with six counts of wire fraud, nine counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft. As alleged in part in the DOJ Release:

[D]uring the second half of 2019, Dawood offered to assist the victim with the management of real estate properties and retirement savings that the victim had inherited from the victim’s deceased brother. Specifically, Dawood allegedly helped the victim open a trust account at a bank for the purpose of managing the retirement savings.

Without the victim’s knowledge or authorization, Dawood then initiated wire and online banking transfers from the victim’s trust account to Dawood-controlled accounts, the indictment alleges. Without the victim’s knowledge or permission, Dawood allegedly also wired money from the victim’s trust account to people with whom Dawood had personal and business relationships.

Dawood allegedly convinced the victim to transfer ownership of his home and his late brother’s real estate holdings to various companies. Dawood falsely represented that the victim would retain an ownership interest in his residence and the inherited real estate through these companies. In fact, Dawood and other individuals close to him controlled these companies, according to the indictment.

In total, Dawood allegedly fraudulently obtained at least $2,202,688 in the victim’s money and property. The illicitly obtained funds allegedly were used to purchase real estate in La Crescenta and Fontana.

Founder And Former Chief Investment Officer Of Infinity Q Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison (DOJ Release)
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founder-and-former-chief-investment-officer-infinity-q-sentenced-15-years-prison
In the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, James Velissaris (founder/former Chief Investment Officer of Infinity Q Capital Management), 38, pled guilty to one count of securities fraud; and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison plus three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay about $22 million in forfeiture.  As alleged in part in the DOJ Release:   

Background

VELISSARIS was the founder and chief investment officer of Infinity Q, an investment adviser that ran both a mutual fund (the “Mutual Fund”), started in about 2014, and a hedge fund (the “Hedge Fund,” and collectively the “Investment Funds”), started in about 2017.  As of 2021, the two funds purported to have approximately $3 billion in assets under management.  Infinity Q was headquartered in New York, New York, and employed a small staff, including a chief compliance and chief risk officer (“Employee-1”). 

A major component of both the Mutual Fund and the Hedge Fund’s holdings were over-the-counter (“OTC”) derivative positions that involved customized contracts that allowed the counterparties to take positions on the volatility, or price movement, of underlying assets or indices.  VELISSARIS, through Infinity Q, represented to its investors that it valued these OTC derivative positions based on fair value, and that in order to do so, it utilized the services of an independent third-party provider.  In particular, Infinity Q represented to investors and other stakeholders that it used Bloomberg Valuations Service (“BVAL”) to independently calculate the fair value of these positions, in accordance with the terms of the underlying derivative contracts.  These OTC derivative positions comprised hundreds of millions of dollars of the Investment Funds’ portfolios.  

VELISSARIS’s Scheme to Lie to Investors and Inflate Derivative Swap Positions

In fact, however, VELISSARIS defrauded Infinity Q’s investors by taking an active role in the valuation of Infinity Q’s positions and by modeling the positions in ways that were not based on the actual terms of the underlying contracts and were inconsistent with fair value.  VELISSARIS’s input into the BVAL valuation process was inconsistent with Infinity Q’s representations about the independence of the process and allowed VELISSARIS to fraudulently mismark positions in BVAL.  VELISSARIS engaged in the mismarking of positions in BVAL by making false entries in BVAL’s system, including by secretly altering the computer code employed by BVAL that caused BVAL to alter and disregard certain critical terms.  Altering and disregarding terms in this fashion caused BVAL to report values that were artificially inflated and, often, much higher than fair value. 

By manipulating OTC derivative positions in BVAL in this way, VELISSARIS caused numerous positions in the Investment Funds to have anomalous and, at times, impossible valuations.  For example, at times, VELISSARIS made manipulations in either the Mutual Fund and/or the Hedge Fund that caused certain identical positions that were held by both the Mutual Fund and the Hedge Fund (namely, a position where all the material terms are the same) to have substantially divergent values.  In other cases, some of VELISSARIS’s manipulations caused certain positions held by the Investment Funds to have impossible values, such as where, under the true terms of the swap, the value adopted by VELISSARIS could only be true if volatility were negative – a condition which is mathematically impossible.

Ultimately, after VELISSARIS’s mismarking scheme was uncovered in or about February 2021, Infinity Q liquidated the Investment Funds and sold its OTC derivative positions.  These positions were sold for hundreds of millions of dollars less than their purported market values in BVAL, thereby resulting in substantial losses to the investors in the Investment Funds.

VELISSARIS Lies to Auditors and Obstructs the SEC’s Investigation

In order to hide this scheme and prevent its detection, VELISSARIS lied to numerous outside stakeholders and regulators.  First, in order to prevent Infinity Q’s outside auditor (the “Auditor”) from discovering the fraud, VELISSARIS provided the Auditor with falsified term sheets from counterparties that he had altered to change the true terms of certain OTC derivative positions.  In particular, in connection with a number of audits, the Auditor selected certain OTC positions that it would independently value in order to confirm the reasonableness of Infinity Q’s values from BVAL.  In order to ensure that the Auditor would not arrive at materially different results when independently valuing positions that VELISSARIS had manipulated in BVAL, VELISSARIS altered the terms of certain deal documents and provided them to the Auditor.  After receiving these falsified documents and relying on them in its independent evaluation, the Auditor confirmed the reasonableness of VELISSARIS’s valuations in BVAL.

Furthermore, beginning in May 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) opened an inquiry and later an investigation into Infinity Q’s valuation practices.  In connection with that investigation, VELISSARIS provided false and misleading information to the SEC.  For example, when the SEC asked for original documents that had been provided to investors, VELISSARIS altered the documents before providing them to the SEC, including certain alterations that would help hide his mismarking scheme.  For example, Infinity Q’s original investor materials stated that “[o]nce a price is established for a portfolio security, it shall be used for all Funds that hold the security.”  As explained above, this was untrue, and on numerous occasions, manipulations in BVAL made by VELISSARIS caused the same positions in the Mutual Fund and the Hedge Fund to have substantially different values.  To conceal the falsity of Infinity Q’s disclosures, VELISSARIS, along with Employee-1, removed this line from investor documents that were provided to the SEC.

In June 2020, the SEC requested that Infinity Q provide additional materials, including documents regarding Infinity Q’s valuation committee and all of its meeting minutes.  Infinity Q’s investor materials had represented that Infinity Q had a valuation committee, including VELISSARIS; that the committee would meet monthly or more often; and that VELISSARIS would be responsible for preparing minutes of such meetings.  In fact, however, VELISSARIS had not kept notes of any such meetings.  Accordingly, days before responding to the SEC, VELISSARIS made up notes purporting to be from valuation committee meetings in 2019 and 2020 and submitted them to the SEC.

Bakersfield CPA Pleads Guilty to Stealing Over $350,000 from Investors (DOJ Release)
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/bakersfield-cpa-pleads-guilty-stealing-over-350000-investors
In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, Jeffrey Todd Stewart pled guilty to wire fraud. As alleged in part in the DOJ Release:

[S]tewart was employed as a certified public accountant in Bakersfield. Between September 2014 and June 2018, Stewart solicited and received over $2 million from investors to pay fees and expenses purportedly needed for an overseas business deal. Stewart represented to the investors that their investments were being used for the deal and promised significant returns. Although Stewart used most of the money for the purported deal, he spent $355,000 of the money obtained from the investors on his own personal expenses, including mortgage payments, trips to Las Vegas, and gambling.

SEC Obtains Judgment After Executives Settle Case Alleging an Inflated Truck Pricing Scheme (SEC Release)
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2023/lr25690.htm
In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, without admitting or denying the allegations in an SEC Complaint, former Celadon Group Inc. President/Chief Operating Officer William Eric Meek and Chief Operating Officer Bobby Peavler entered into a Final Consent Judgment in which they agreed to be permanently enjoined from aiding and abetting future violations of Sections 10(b), 13(a), 13(b)(2)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 10b-5, 12b-20, 13a-1, 13a-11, and 13a-13 thereunder and from committing future violations of Rule 13b2-2; and, further, Peavler also agreed to be enjoined from future violations of Exchange Act Rule 13a-14. Meek and Peavler will pay a civil penalty of $50,000 each and each is barred from acting as an officer or director of a public company for a period of three years. Further, Meek and Peavler agreed to be suspended from appearing and practicing before the SEC as an accountant (with the right to apply for reinstatement after three years). As alleged in part in the SEC Release:

[M]eek, the former president and chief operating officer of Celadon Group, Inc., and Peavler, the former chief financial officer of Celadon Group Inc., participated in a scheme to buy and sell trucks at inflated prices, in some cases double or triple the trucks' fair market value. The complaint alleged these transactions were intended to conceal Celadon's failure to write down the trucks' net book values and take impairment charges. The complaint further alleged that as a result, Celadon overstated its pre-tax income, net income, and earnings per share in its annual report for the period ending June 30, 2016, and in its subsequent filings through the period ending December 31, 2016. Additionally, the complaint alleged Meek and Peavler lied to auditors about the true nature of these transactions.

CFTC Orders Goldman Sachs to Pay $15,000,000 for Violations of Swap Business Conduct Standards / Swap Dealer Failed to Disclose Pre-Trade-Mid-Market Marks and Failed to Communicate in a Fair and Balanced Manner (CFTC Release)
https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8685-23
A CFTC Order settled charges against Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
https://www.cftc.gov/media/8376/enfgoldmanorder041023/download that the firm failed to disclose dozens of pre-trade-mid-market marks (PTMMM), in violation of Regulation 23.431, and failed to communicate to clients in a fair and balanced manner based on principles of fair dealing and good faith, in violation of Regulation 23.433. Goldman admitted that for nearly all “same-day” swaps executed in 2015 and 2016, it either failed to disclose any PTMMM or failed to disclose an accurate PTMMM, and that this conduct violated a CFTC regulation. The CFTC Order imposed a $15,000,000 civil monetary penalty. As alleged in part in the CFTC Release:

The order finds that in 2015 and 2016, Goldman transacted dozens of “same-day” equity index swaps with U.S.-based clients. In a “same-day” equity index swap, the equity leg of the swap strikes on the “same day” as the other material terms of the swap are agreed upon, rather than—as is typical—the day after the date of agreement. The order finds that Goldman failed to disclose to clients the PTMMM of these swaps—often disclosing a PTMMM for a different swap (the analogous “T+1” swap) instead, thereby obscuring the value of the same-day swap.

The order finds that Goldman opportunistically solicited or agreed to enter into same-day swaps only on days and at times that were financially advantageous to Goldman and disadvantageous to its clients. Moreover, the manner in which Goldman communicated to clients caused the same-day swaps to appear more economically advantageous to the clients than they actually were. As found in the order, in certain instances, Goldman disclosed a PTMMM for the “T+1” swap and then bid over it for the “same-day” swap, giving the client the impression that the same-day swap was a better deal for the client than the T+1 swap when, in fact, it was not. Indeed, the order finds any marginal benefit Goldman offered to clients on the interest rate leg of the swap would be outweighed by the cost to clients on the equity leg when transacting “same day.” The order finds that Goldman failed to communicate in a fair and balanced manner by touting the supposed benefits of same-day swap transactions, but not the corresponding costs.

Bill Singer's Comment: As in this is 2023 and the misconduct took place in 2015/2016 -- as in seven to eight years ago.  What took so long? (Don't bother to answer: That's both a rhetorical and cynical question). Also read: 

In 2023 FINRA Settles With Goldman Sachs Over Mismarked Short Sales Dating Back to 2015 (BrokeAndBroker.com Blog / April 5, 2023)
https://www.brokeandbroker.com/6974/goldman-sachs-finra/

There are times when Wall Street's regulators just don't seem in much of a rush. When of the industry's whales is involved, everything seems to slow down. If it were one of the small fry, we all suspect that things would have moved quicker and with more devastating sanctions. In a recent FINRA settlement, the regulator alleged that Goldman Sachs had engaged in short selling misconduct from October 2015 to April 2018 involving 60 million short sale orders. And here we are 2023. What took so long?