Heartland Securities, Brokers to Pay $70 Mln to Settle Charges
By Neil Roland
Washington, Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Heartland Securities Corp., a day trading firm, and four brokers with its predecessor firm, Datek Securities Corp., agreed to pay $70 million to settle securities fraud charges.
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Sheldon Maschler, Erik Maschler, Jeffrey Citron, and Michael McCarty executed millions of illegal proprietary trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market's Small Order Execution System. The defendants hid their fraud from 1993 to 2001 by creating fictitious books and filing false regulatory reports, the SEC said.
Sheldon Maschler agreed to pay $29.2 million in penalties and Citron $22.5 million, among the largest regulatory penalties ever assessed against individuals, the SEC said.
Sounds like those illegal proprietary trades were profitable....... for a while anyways. Even if there is a punitive element to the penalties these guys must have made a shit load to agree to the settlement!:eek:
Sounds like those illegal proprietary trades were profitable....... for a while anyways. Even if there is a punitive element to the penalties these guys must have made a shit load to agree to the settlement!:eek:
The SEC comes along, with the cooperation of the NASD (which is made up of dealers, whose edge the 'SOES Bandits' took), and manages to take back 70 million of the dollars the dealers lost in a competitive marketplace.
I can't say that I'm convinced justice was done. Especially since the conduct that earned penalties one year -- trading for the firm's own account -- was blessed the next. It almost seems like the establishment came out on top. Again.