Another reminder of how corruption rippled through the investment sector on the wings of easy credit and predatory.
Last Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported a federal judge found that the marketing of mortgage-backed securities to conservative investors was an act of fraud and the CEO was ordered to pay a $10 million fine.
Here’s the SEC’s lingo on the matter:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that a federal judge has ordered the former CEO of Brookstreet Securities Corp. to pay a maximum $10 million penalty in a securities fraud case related to the financial crisis.
The SEC litigated the case beginning in December 2009, when the agency charged Stanley C. Brooks and Brookstreet with fraud for systematically selling risky mortgage-backed securities to customers with conservative investment goals. Brookstreet and Brooks developed a program through which the firm’s registered representatives sold particularly risky and illiquid types of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMOs) to more than 1,000 seniors, retirees, and others for whom the securities were unsuitable. Brookstreet and Brooks continued to promote and sell the risky CMOs even after Brooks received numerous warnings that these were dangerous investments that could become worthless overnight. The fraud caused severe investor losses and eventually caused the firm to collapse.