VRSP – Variable Rate Structured Products
A Variable Rate Structured Product (VRSP) is a complex investment vehicle that places an investor in unnecessary risk but pays a high commission to the broker of the product. The financial incentive often causes advisors to place investors in such investments despite the investment being inconsistent with the risk tolerance of the investor. Such an action constitutes fraud and we can help recover losses in VRSP investments.
The investments are sold inappropriately if sold to moderate or conservative investors. VRSPs are high-risk structured products and pay interest at a fixed rate for an initial period, usually 1-3 years. After the initial period, the investments are not guaranteed to pay any interest. The recovery of the principal at maturity is based on the operation of complex, derivative items. So the principal is not secured. Additionally, a secondary market may not exist for VRSPs. This means that there may be little to no way to sell these investments after purchased.
Recent regulator action highlights the issue. On September 5, 2024, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) entered into a settlement with Newbridge Securities concerning its unsuitable sales of VRSP investments.
Shortly thereafter, on September 18, 2024, Wedbush Morgan entered into a similar settlement with FINRA. Wedbush agreed to a $50,000 fine and to pay $77,736 to investors for losses. The charges were initiated based upon Wedbush’s sale of such investments to investors with low or moderate risk profiles. The regulator also found that a lack of supervision contributed to these fraudulent sales violations.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a warning about these products back in 2022. It has become increasingly concerned about the sale of complex investment products to retail investors. These types of products use option strategies, investments tied to unusual indices, and other exotica. The securities industry has known of the risks associated with this investment vehicle for some time.
We represent investors nationwide and help them recover losses in such unsuitable investments.

Peter Joseph Glowacki
Peter Joseph Glowacki is accused of making trades in the accounts of his clients without sufficient authority. This violates the federal securities rules and the securities rules of most states. We are a firm that helps investors recover losses from such misdeeds.
From January 2022 through December 2023, as alleged by regulators, Peter Joseph Glowacki exercised discretionary authority when placing 105 trades in fourteen customer/investor accounts belonging to nine customers/investors without first obtaining prior written authorization from the customers and having the accounts accepted as discretionary by his employer.
In addition, from December 2021 through January 2023, Glowacki communicated with 12 investors about securities business via text messages sent through his personal cell phone- even though RBC, his employer, had not approved Glowacki’s use of this channel for business communications.
This is troublesome because a) securities firms are required to keep written communications with their investors, and b) many complex investment fraud schemes start with brokers communicating with their investors through unapproved channels.
Although Glowacki discussed his trading with the investors generally, he did not speak with the customers about the specific trades on the dates of the transactions. This falls outside of the time/place discretion that a broker has. In addition, RBC did not accept the accounts as discretionary.
Regulators handed Glowacki a two-month suspension from the securities industry and a fine of $10,000.

Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs)
Collateralized Loan Obligations, also known as CLOs, are a popular new investment being sold to retail investors despite their high risk. As reported in the Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2024, Wall Street is trying to sell ordinary investors “low-rated corporate loans” by packaging them as CLOs. Such sales are largely inappropriate unless the investor is fully aware of the risk, the investor had the means to financially withstand a high risk of loss, and the investor is looking to speculate.
BlackRock, Nuveen, and other asset managers have recently asked permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of collateralized loan obligations. CLOs are made by bundling bonds rated as junk. Those asset managers will join about $16 billion in assets of other CLO funds that have already entered the market.
These investments are especially vulnerable to economic downturn. CLOs contain loans to companies with weaker credit ratings. Like its cousins, the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO), those obligated to pay CLO investors are usually the first hit and first to fail during times of recession.
FINRA, the entity that oversees securities brokerages, strictly regulates CLOs and CDOs. FINRA Rule 2111 states that a securities broker can only recommend high risk investments to suitable investors. That means that an investor must understand the investment, the investment must be consistent with the objectives of the investor, the investor must be able to financially withstand the risk of such investment, and that the investor must be looking to incur such risk.
Brokers incentives are significant, and not necessarily legitimate, to recommend unsuitable CLOs. The investments generally pay a much higher commission than a traditional investment such as a stock or bond.
We have represented investors for over 20 years in claims concerning investment suitability. Call for a free consultation toll-free at 844-253-5858.

Losses with Jeffrey Perryman of NYLife
We are handling multiple claims against Northern Colorado investment advisor and insurance agent Jeffrey Perryman. Perryman was previously employed by New York Life Insurance, NYLife Securities and Eagle Strategies, LLC. Please call 303-300-5022 or 1-844-253-5858 if you were a customer / investor of Perryman’s for a free and confidential consultation.
In October 2024, FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, entered into a settlement with Perryman. Under the terms of the settlement, Perryman agreed to a lifetime ban from employment with any securities brokerage in the United States.
Jeffrey Perryman is alleged to have committed multiple misdeeds in insurance and securities sales. As to insurance, he is alleged to have oversold life insurance to customers, misrepresented the cost of the policies, and inappropriately sold policies by convincing customers to take loans against other policies.
Perryman focused on companies located in Northern Colorado, selling them large numbers of unsuitable and unnecessary insurance products. He also charged management fees for the sale of these products despite prohibitions against such actions.
In October of 2024, financial industry regulators barred Perryman from the securities industry. Perryman failed to cooperate with regulators or otherwise provide a sufficient defense to deny that he engaged in inappropriate business practices.
He is also alleged to have charged investment management fees to customers to oversee insurance policies where he had already been paid a hefty commission. Perryman billed customers through his company, Legacy Wealth. This created an unreasonably high payment for his services and constituted a “double-dip” of compensation.
As to securities, Perryman is alleged to have committed fraud in the misrepresentation of variable annuities, inappropriate sales of A-share mutual funds, and churning of mutual funds.
Perryman ultimately was permitted to resign and lost his employment with New York Life and NYLife Securities for charging clients for unapproved activities.
Currently, there are five pending customer complaints/suits concerning Jeffrey Perryman pursuant to his CRD on FINRA’s BrokerCheck.org.
Industry standards require life insurance and annuity sales to be suitable. Securities regulations require securities sales to be in the best interests of the investor. Fiduciaries like Perryman, who operated as a “registered investment advisers”, are required to go above and beyond that. Registered investment advisers are required to put their client’s interests ahead of their own and fully disclose all material facts. Perryman’s failure to do this has led to substantial losses by his clients.
We are located in the Denver Tech Center and have represented Colorado residents for over 20 years concerning fraud and negligence by the financial services industry. Please contact us to determine your rights in recovering your losses.

Jim Geake investment fraud
Jim Geake inappropriately sold investors illiquid investments. These include Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Business Development companies (BDCs). Please contact us if you lost funds or cannot access your savings. We have represented investors for inappropriate BDC and REIT sales for over 20 years. Call us toll-free at 1-844-253-5858.
Geake is a financial advisor with Madison Avenue Securities in Skokie, Illinois. He or his employer has been sued, or threatened with suit, fifteen times concerning Geake’s inappropriate investment recommendations.
Fifteen legal suits is excessive under any measurement. A brokerage firm is required to give heightened supervision when a financial advisor has excessive complaints. Generally, the level considered excessive is anything above four complaints.
One such suit concerning a REIT that Geake sold an investor settled in 2021. The investor received $450,000 in the settlement.
There are many reasons that these investments are inappropriate for many investors. Regulators have highlighted the problems with non-traded REITs for years. These include the high commissions paid to advisors, inability to trade or sell the investment, lack of guarantee as to distributions, inability to value the investment, and inability to determine the health of the investment.
The individual investments sold by Geake include NorthStar Healthcare REIT, Hospitality, Investors Trust (HIT), and other non-traded REITs. Complaints also include inappropriate sale of variable annuities. Like REITs and BDCs, these investments pay the broker an unreasonably high commission for selling investments that meet the needs of very few investors.

KBS REIT III Loss
On December 25, 2023, KBS REIT III trustees cautioned that the REIT could experience sweeping defaults in 2024. We have represented REIT and other investors for over 20 years. Call to learn your options in recovering REIT loss.
The ominous warning, released on a holiday in hopes of downplaying the issue, is dire news for investors. KBS states, “Considering the current commercial real estate lending environment, this raises substantial doubt as to KBS REIT III’s ability to continue.”
The REIT lost approximately $350 million in property value since September 2022. In January 2023, KBS III defaulted on a loan for a Portland office building. By July, this building was in foreclosure. While higher interest rates and changing work habits are given as reasons, these are not unforeseen issues. Further, REITs have always been highly risky investments.
In February 2024, KBS announced that it needed to raise $100 million in five months to retain a $643 office portfolio. This would allow it to extend a loan for a fourth time and prevent it from going into default.
In 2011, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the primary regulator overseeing securities brokerages, issued an investor alert concerning REITs. FINRA alerted attempted to alert investors that sales pitches for REITs as alternatives to stock market volatility hid the truth. Such a pitch glosses over the “lack of liquidity, fees and other risks” of non-traded real estate investment trusts.
The assertion that REITs, particularly non-traded REITs, have stable value can also be an illusion. While brokerages are required to list a value for the REIT, there is very little requiring the brokerage to list more than the net asset value of the REIT. Important factors such as liabilities and market conditions are ignored in the valuation. This has always been known, and the Wall Street Journal recently highlighted this problem with non-traded REITs. This can leave investors unaware of a REIT’s pending collapse.
While traded REITs are down more than 35% since February 2022, non-traded REITs investing in similar properties have not changed their valuation. REITs avoid assigning accurate valuations because cutting the value to accurate levels angers advisors and investors.
Further evidence that REIT collapse and the volatile nature of REITs was known can be seen in January 2024. Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, Howard Lutnick, predicted that $700 billion in non-traded REITs could default.
Despite these issues, brokerages love REITs. The heightened fees and costs pad the profits of brokerages and are rarely disclosed to the investor. Industry professionals should know that the REIT market is not stable, but are boom-and-bust investments.
The SEC has warned advisors and the investing public about REITs for years. Up-front costs can be approximately 15%. Most of this is commission to the Advisor. Consequently, advisors have inappropriate motivation to recommend the investments. Once purchased, the ability to liquidate is nearly impossible.
We help investors recover losses from such inappropriate investments. Call for a free and confidential initial consultation concerning KBS REIT III or any other questionable investment.

Scott Norvell Annuity Sanction
Scott Norvell is accused of misrepresenting aspects of annuity products. Norvell, operating in Omaha, Nebraska, is an advisor with Brokers Financial, and previously with LPL and Cetera. Advisors commonly engage in the high-cost practice of variable annuity fraud, and variable annuity switching in particular, due to the high commissions at stake. We have represented annuity victims for over 20 years and know how the high commissions of variable annuities can lead an advisor to misrepresent the investment.
On November 22, 2023, the regulator overseeing securities brokers, FINRA, suspended Norvell from the securities industry for a period of two months. Norvell entered into an agreement for this sanction. While he did not admit to the findings, he also did not deny the findings. The settlement allowed Norvell to avoid a greater sanction if the matter went to trial.
Norvell negligently misrepresented the death benefits that customers would receive following the exchange of their existing variable annuity products for a different variable annuity product. Annuity switching is a form of fraud. There are very few reasons to switch from one annuity to another, other than the high commission that the advisor receives.
States and federal regulators take annuity switching seriously. A broker can receive, and the investor can pay in costs, around 15% of the sale. FINRA has special rules to prevent annuity switching. States can have strict rules that sometimes entail an investor not only receiving a written warning but requires the advisor to read the warning out loud.
The findings stated that Norvell negligently misrepresented to his investors that the new product had a guaranteed death benefit that was equal to the greater of the account value or the customer’s contributions, less adjusted withdrawals. However, the guaranteed death benefit was only available by selecting an optional rider on the application. Norvell failed to select the rider on the applications for these transactions or collect the additional fee. As a result, the customers did not receive a guaranteed death benefit and switched annuities for no reason.
A majority of the transactions took place after Norvell’s supervisor had notified him that he had failed to select the optional death benefit rider in connection with a different transaction. The findings also stated that Norvell caused his advisory firm to maintain inaccurate books by falsifying signatures of senior customers by electronically signing documents on their behalf. Although Norvell had prior permission from the customers, the firm prohibited signing a customer’s name or initials regardless of the customer’s knowledge or consent.
In addition, Norvell falsely attested in a compliance questionnaire that he had not signed or affixed another person’s signature on a document.
This is not the first time Norvell has found himself in legal trouble. Investors previously sued him three times for false or incomplete information in the sale of investment products. At least two of these prior complaints involved annuities. Norvell has also previously faced criminal charges for providing false information. While it appears that none of these prior allegations resulted in a verdict against Norvell, the allegations should have put his employers on notice of the need to have heighted their supervision of Norvell.

Bovee Marijuana Investment Ponzi
We are investigating Alexandra Bovee, aka Alexandria Montgomery and Aia Montgomery, who participated in a marijuana investment Ponzi. The former Edward Jones broker in Sumter, South Carolina accepted a securities industry bar rather than participate in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) investigation into her alleged work for a cannabis growing company.
We are a firm representing investors and pursuing cases against securities brokerages.
Bovee declined to provide testimony when given the opportunity in FINRA’s investigation of whether she had “violated FINRA rules or federal securities laws” in connection with sales of securities issued by Integrated National Resources (INR), according to a FINRA Advice Waiver and Consent filing of settlement finalized on Wednesday. In that position she received inappropriate commissions totaling $715,000. Her refusal triggered the automatic bar under FINRA Rule 8210, according to the FINRA AWC filing.
Bovee resigned from Edward Jones in December 2022, according to the regulatory AWC. She had initially worked as a financial advisor (stockbroker) but was serving as a branch office administrator at the time of her resignation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
We allege that Edward Jones failed to appropriately supervise Bovee. Securities broker-dealers, like Edward Jones, have a duty to supervise inexperienced advisors and the investment actions advisors make away from the firm. Bovee had been a student and managed a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas prior to starting at Edward Jones in 2019, according to BrokerCheck. Shortly thereafter, in 2022, Bovee started her inappropriate relationship of investing clients in INR.
INR, also known as WeedGenics, was shut down and all assets were frozen in mid-2023 following the initiation of the SEC’s legal action against the company. The company, which launched in 2019, purported to raise investor funds to develop and expand cannabis cultivation facilities in California and Nevada, and had raised approximately $61.7 million from approximately 350 investors, according to the SEC’s complaint in a federal court in Santa Ana, California.

Some investors of the INR marijuana investment Ponzi have recourse.
Matthew Stucke Investors
Matthew Stucke, currently with Cetera, and previously with Cambridge and Raymond James, is alleged to have inappropriately invested his investors. Please contact us if you were a Stucke investor. We have represented investors for 20 years. We can provide a free and confidential consultation as to whether you were sold inappropriate stock or other investments.
There are currently two suits filed against the employers of Stucke. Details of the allegations reveal that he is accused of mishandling the investments in a discretionary account in a suit filed in July 2023. This suit sought $370,000 in damages and settled for $275,000.
A second suit filed in October 2023 alleges that Stucke recommended unsuitable and overly risky stock investments. The suit seeks damages of approximately $100,000.
Raymond James also, according to Stucke, also forced him out of their employment for investment practices. A FINRA panel found that Raymond James appropriately terminated Stucke in 2020 because of “email communications with clients that violated firm policies, including emails providing clients with limited-distribution investment material without firm approval.”
Stucke had asserted that he was the victim of a conspiracy and sued Raymond James to have the terminations removed. He stated that others at Raymond James conspired against him to take his business.
FINRA denied the attempt by Stucke to have the termination removed from his record. Not only that, FINRA ordered to Stucke to pay back a $1 million loan he had taken with his former employer.

Stewart Ginn Fraud
Stewart Ginn is affiliated with Independent Financial Group and Crosby Investment Group with offices located in California and Colorado. Regulators accuse Ginn of churning accounts, of mostly elderly investors, and creating millions of dollars in losses and unnecessary commissions.
A regulatory complaint asserts that Ginn, a licensed securities broker, exercised control over the accounts of at least five investors. These investors were mostly elderly and retired. Ginn then proceeded to trade the accounts excessively. This was in the best interests of Ginn and not his investors. As a result, the investors incurred losses and commissions of over $4.5 million.
Securities regulations currently require that a broker act in the best interests of an investor. A broker fails to act in the best interests of a client when the broker puts commissions ahead of the investment objectives of a client. As the percentage of the portfolio consumed by commissions increases, the ability for the portfolio to sustain value decreases. Even before this best interests standard was the rule, brokers were required to only recommend suitable trades and abstain from excessive trading.
Ginn and his employer are currently facing three investor lawsuits in addition to the regulatory suit. All assert allegations of excessive trading and excessive commissions.
We have handled investor suits such as these for over 20 years. Please contact us to discuss your options. Initial consultations are free and confidential.
