The Wolves of Wall Street May Be Endangered, But They’re Not Extinct Yet

The Wolf of Wall Street is poised to take home some precious hardware at the Oscars, but disciples of the real-life Jordan Belfort have fallen on hard times.

The chief securities regulator of Massachusetts, William Galvin, is taking aim at Stratton Oakmont alumni Christopher Veale, accusing him of excessive trading—churning—in the account of an 81-year-old client of the firm he worked at until 2012, Brookville Capital Partners.

As reported by Zeke Faux in a Bloomberg article, Galvin is going hard after unscrupulous brokers and their firms.

The Bloomberg article quotes Galvin:

“Rogue brokers have long been a plague on the investing public,” Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin said in the statement. “My office, along with other state and federal regulators, is determined to move aggressively against them as well as the firms that hire them.”

According to reporter Zeke Faux, Veale has worked at seventeen brokerage firms since he left Stratton Oakmont in 1996, and apparently he took the lessons of Jordan Belfort to heart, if Secretary Galvin’s allegations are true. He allegedly charged his customer over $300,000 in commissions and hidden fees over a three-year period.

After he left Stratton Oakmont and before he joined Brookville Capital Partners and his current New York firm, Legend Financial, he made a stopover at another notorious “bucket shop,” John Thomas Financial, led by the now-barred Tommy Belesis. This kind of career path is all too common, skipping from one disreputable firm to the next, just a step ahead of the regulators.

Despite the best efforts of Galvin, FINRA, the SEC and other regulators, old-school boiler rooms manage to survive, pushing penny stocks and churning the accounts of their vulnerable clients after hooking them with a cold call. Unfortunately, it’s not just a Hollywood throwback, it’s a 2014 reality.

If you have suffered a loss as a result of your broker using high-pressure, “boiler-room” tactics such as cold calling, pitching penny stocks and trading your account at high velocity, please contact The Galbraith Law Firm at 212.203.1249 or kevin@galbraithlawfirm.com for a free confidential consultation regarding your legal rights.