From Reuters: The U.S. futures industry reeled on Tuesday as
Iowa-based broker PFGBest collapsed after regulators accused it of
misappropriating customer funds for more than two years, dealing a new blow to
trader trust just months after MF Global's demise.
PFG founder and attempted suicide Russell Wasendorf
intercepted confidential regulatory documents that were mailed by the National
Futures Association to what the industry group believed was U.S. Bank, PFG's
bank, a person close to the situation told Reuters. Instead, they were sending
the documents, used to independently verify a broker's bank balances, to a post
office box that Wasendorf had set up, the source said, who declined to be
identified.
Wasendorf forged signatures and fabricated bank balances on documents
and simply mailed them back to the Chicago-based NFA, the person said. The
scheme apparently began to unravel as the NFA shifted to electronic
confirmations. The NFA "started getting suspicious. He was resisting
this new way of confirming the balance," the source said. Wasendorf only
recently signed the authorization, a decision that would quickly have led
regulators to uncover the discrepancy..
Read all about it at http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-broker-pfgbest-documentbre8691f5-20120710,0,1722185.story
No comments:
Post a Comment