Peregrine Files For Bankruptcy After $215M Goes Missing, Where Were The Regulators?

Forbes ^ | 7-11-12 | Halah Touryalai,

[STARWISE]

*snip*

The accusations began on Monday when Peregrine’s front-line regulator, the National Futures Association (NFA), hit the firm with an enforcement action prohibiting it from doing any more business after finding that it failed to meet key financial requirements.

Yesterday the CFTC, a U.S. regulator, got involved and sued Peregrine for fraud by misappropriating customer funds, violated customer fund segregation laws, and made false statements in financial statements filed with the Commission.

This isn’t just another firm going bust because for the second time in less than a year customer funds that should have been protected have gone missing amid the mess. In October MFGlobal filed for bankruptcy after making bad bets on Europe and it was discovered that over a billion in client funds were missing–$1.6 billion has yet to be recovered.

Now, Peregrine, which is much smaller than MF Global and whose investors include farmers, has gone under and roughly $215 million in client assets can not be tracked.

[Liz]

<><>WRT credit cards----those are frequently used to facilitate fraud......placing large sums of money on the card ostensibly for large purchases.......that are later turned into cash. <><><>WRT lines of credit----he had to have falsified documents listing falsified net worth in order to get LOC. <><><>If he was a gambler---he could have put millions into untraceable casino chips which can be cashed-in anywhere in the world.

[stephenjohnbanker]

” A huge tipoff is whether bank withdrawals support luxurious lifestyle including payments for real estate, investment and stock holdings, jewelry, luxury vehicles, resort travel and gifts from luxury outlets for wives and mistresses. “

It’s there somewhere............it always is. Takes a modicum of effort though.