I want to talk to you about a recent article I just read about a financial advisor stealing their client's money. I want to make sure that you can avoid those same problems. We already know about Bernie Madoff and the issues that he's caused through all the ponzi schemes but they still exist today and you really do have to watch out for yourself.
There's a recent article talking about a gentleman in Minnesota that stole about a million dollars from his clients over the last two years which is a lot of money. One of the things that he did is he basically took the money, put it into his own checking account, and he used it. Well even one scenario, he took $100,000 from a client, turned it around and went and bought a Maserati. This is a really, really nice car.
How To Avoid Financial Fraud
I want to make sure you can protect yourself from those same potential problems. There's some things you can do to make sure you will avoid those issues. The first thing to do is do a broker check or make sure they are a registered investment advisor or an investment advisor that is registered with the securities exchange commission. What you can do is you can go to brokercheck.com. At brokercheck.com you can enter in the person's name or even their firm to make sure they are registered. Another good site to go to is investor.gov. It does basically the same thing that brokercheck does and even while you're there, you can see what type of report will come up as far as if they have any blemishes, if they have any problems in the past, are they an advisor that has a lot of disputes. Right there will give you a lot of information but also some red flags. If they are not registered as an investment advisor though the securities exchange commission, they're not allowed to do any trading of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange rate funds and really they're not allowed to give you much financial advice.