Articles Tagged with Pennsylvania

A case involving real estate lending illustrates the perils of failing to comply with the securities laws.  Last fall the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Paul Z. Singer, a Philadelphia-based lender, and his company, Singer Financial Corp. (“SFC”), alleging that from October 2012 to July 2015, Singer, “by and through SFC, raised $4.5 million from at least 70 investors through an illegal and unregistered offering of securities in the form of promissory notes.”

This is not the first time Singer and SFC have been alleged to have sold unregistered securities.  The Pennsylvania Securities Commission imposed penalties against SFC in 1997 and Singer and SFC in 2007 for violations of Pennsylvania’s securities laws pertaining to the unregistered offer and sale of securities.  Also, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities imposed a $5,000 fine against SFC in 2010 for selling unregistered securities. Continue reading ›

Earlier this month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil lawsuit against four individuals who are alleged to have defrauded seniors through so-called “Free Dinner” investment seminars conducted by their investment adviser firm.  The SEC alleged that Joseph Andrew Paul and John D. Ellis, Jr., who managed and jointly owned Paul-Ellis Investment Associates, LLC (PEIA), created materially false and fraudulent marketing material in order to induce Florida residents to attend the “Free Dinner” seminar.  More specifically, the SEC alleged that the marketing materials included performance return statistics that were not consistent with the actual track record of the firm, but rather had been copied and pasted from another advisory firm’s website.

The individuals were also alleged to have recruited James S. Quay of Atlanta, Georgia and Donald H. Ellison of Palm Beach, Florida, who allegedly used the false material to mislead seniors who responded to the “Free Dinner” invitation.  The SEC further alleges that Mr. Quay used an alias, Stephen Jameson in order to conceal his true identity.  Mr. Quay was previously involved and was held liable in an enforcement action brought by the SEC in 2012.  Before that, Quay was an active sales agent in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme operated by an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the SEC, Quay was also convicted of tax fraud in 2005.

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