Blotter
Penitence Pays Off for Putnam:
The SEC filed charges against six former officers of Putnam Fiduciary Trust Company (PFTC) for helping to defraud a defined contribution client and a group of Putnam mutual funds of approximately $4 million. In the end, the SEC decided not to bring enforcement actions against the firm because of “swift, extensive and extraordinary cooperation in the commission's complaint,” according to the release. PFTC's cooperation consisted of prompt self-reporting; an independent internal investigation, the results of which it shared with regulators; terminating and otherwise disciplining those responsible; and providing full-restitution to its defrauded clients.
Silver-Tongued Devil:
Peter Lau, a 37-year-old Merrill Lynch broker from Hauppauge, N.Y., stole $320,000 from 95-year-old Queens native Carrie Cummins, the New York Daily News reported in January. Lau, a broker with Merrill since 1998, allegedly stole 28 checks from Cummins, forged her signature and cashed them. Of Lau, Cummins said to a reporter for the News: “He was tall and handsome, polite, gentle and kind, but it was all ploy.” She said that he even used his young daughter to “get to me.” Lau apparently admitted the thefts to investigators and was charged with grand larceny and forgery, crimes that could put him in the clink for up to 15 years.
But Honey, That's Illegal:
Former stockbroker Lee Edelman got a lot out of his relationship with his girlfriend. The SEC thinks he got $22,786 too much. The agency filed civil insider-trading charges against Edelman after his girlfriend, an associate at a large Manhattan law firm, told him in March 2004 that Applied Materials was in talks to acquire Metron Technology. Metron's shares doubled on Aug. 16, 2004, when the deal was announced. Edelman immediately sold his shares, according to the indictment. According to the SEC, Edelman broke up with his girlfriend several weeks after he began buying Metron shares.
Whack-a-Broker:
Daniel Loren Jenkins, in jail since 1999 for soliciting payment to murder his stockbroker, was re-sentenced to 30 years again this January at the conclusion of a retrial that started in 2003. The story goes that in September 1998 Jenkins was enraged with his stockbroker, Portland native Gerald Bidwell of Bidwell & Co. brokerage, after a bunch of his trades went sour, allegedly costing him thousands of dollars. So when Jenkins heard that Bidwell married the ex-wife of prominent businessman William “Tiger” Warren, he saw an opportunity for retribution. On Sept. 8, 1998, Jenkins called Warren to ask if he'd “sponsor” Jenkins to “whack” Bidwell. Warren testified against Jenkins in his first trial but just eight days after his original testimony, Warren died in a plane crash.
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