Coil failed to
If the customer had held the variable annuities for two additional months, he would not have incurred the fees.
Slonecker recommended and executed unsuitable variable annuity contract replacements or switches involving customers without regard for their age or financial backgrounds, and received $85,000 in commissions. Slonecker’s customers received no significant benefit from the transactions but incurred substantial surrender charges, new extended surrender periods and, in some cases, paid additional fees.
Slonecker made numerous false entries in his member firm’s electronic order-entry system and on other firm records to obtain approval for the switches he recommended to the customers, causing his firm to create and maintain inaccurate books and records. Slonecker’s false entries in the firm’s electronic order-entry system and suitability questionnaires were material false representations he made to his firm.
Slonecker falsely represented to customers that surrender fees associated with the switches would be fully recovered by the bonuses they would receive from their purchases of new variable annuity contracts, when he knew or should have known that the bonuses did not offset the surrender fees and he failed to disclose and explain to the customers the surrender charges associated with switch transactions.
Slonecker failed to respond to FINRA requests for information.