Sometime on or about January 8, 2020, my web hosting service informed me that its Abuse Department had received a DMCA Takedown Notice regarding a February 2010 article that I had authored and published with copyright. After responding to the takedown, I prevailed and my article was allowed to re-post. The theft of my original content was so obvious as to be laughable. Or so I thought. The other day, the same 12-year-old article again was hit with a DMCA Takedown Notice; and, go figure, the infringing article that gave rise to the 2020 incident was, yet again, the source. I'm not quite sure who or what's behind the effort to silence me but I love a good fight. I've laced up the gloves and re-entered the ring.
In this blog, I have often mused -- often lamented -- that Wall Street doesn't always play nice. It's not a street where former employers and former employees tend to shake hands and amicably part ways. Far too often, when someone leaves a brokerage firm, even after a decade's of employment, what ensues is akin to hardball. In today's version of the post-Wall-Street-employment-gauntlet, JPMorgan alleges that a former employee violated his Non-Solicitation Agreement by trying to persuade former clients to transfer their account to his new shop.
The recent federal case involves a deceased customer, his estate, a Merrill Lynch employee, trust accounts, and an annuity. Frankly, they could make a movie out of this one. Until the movie is made, however, you're going to have to read today's blog and see how the case is progressing.
Given all the fraud that has emanated from FINRA's member firm broker-dealers in recent decades, the investing public needs someone on the ramparts of Wall Street -- vigilant, on-watch, alert. Clearly FINRA has the staffing to do the job, but does FINRA get the job done? At first glance, a recent million-dollar settlement suggests that FINRA is a vigilant regulator; however, after further scrutiny, that same settlement exposes FINRA as little more than a toll-booth on Wall Street.