This case is troubling on many, many levels.  First off, since the onset of the Great Recession, I have noticed an increase in the number of queries to me as a lawyer from registered persons concerning offers from their clients to become beneficiaries of various trusts, estates, and insurance policies.  In virtually all such consultations, the broker's member firm has had clear written policies prohibiting "knowing" acceptance of such bequests, with limited exceptions for family members and other circumscribed individuals or circumstances.  

In this case, not only do we have a broker serving as an Attorney-in-Fact to an elderly client in failing health, but that same broker is named as a trustee of that client's living trust, a beneficiary of that client's living trust; and the broker borrowed money from that same client.  Worse, the acceptance of the fiduciary appointments were in conflict with the member firm's written policies, and it appears that Dereig affirmatively covered up his fiduciary roles by not disclosing them in an annual compliance certification.  Moreover, in keeping with his apparently evasive conduct, Dereig did not disclose his borrowing of funds from that same client.

Add to all of the above the allegation of unsuitable trading and we don't have a particularly attractive picture.  Fact is, things just don't get all that much more predatory on Wall Street.