Free Republic

*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...

*snip* FBI agents arrested Russell Wasendorf, Sr., 64, of Cedar Falls on Friday. Federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint charging the CEO of Peregrine Financial Group, Inc., with making false statements to regulators and released documents detailing a wide-ranging fraud scheme that apparently fooled colleagues, customers and regulators for years *snip* Peregrine Financial Group, which marketed itself as PFGBest with offices in Chicago, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday, the same day federal regulators filed civil fraud charges alleging the firm falsely claimed a bank account contained more than $220 million when it actually had about $6 million. The money in...

U.S. futures industry investigators are looking into why Iowa-based collapsed brokerage PFGBest used a tiny accounting firm that appears to be operating from inside a suburban Chicago home to audit its books, according to a person familiar with the matter. Experts said the use of such an auditor should have been a red flag to regulators of a futures brokerage with more than $500 million in assets and several hundred employees across the United States as well as in Shanghai and Canada

Remember when the entire segregated account fiasco was supposedly fixed in the aftermath of the November 2011 MF Global bankruptcy, and where regulators: the CFTC, the SEC, the CME, and anyone you asked, swore up and down this would never happen again? Turns out that 7 months later, the spirit of MFG has struck again, only this time with one letter switched: it is now known as PFG, as we suggested first 3 hours ago when we broke the story.

Small U.S. futures broker PFGBest said its accounts had been effectively frozen on Monday after a suicide attempt by the firm's founder set off an investigation into possible "accounting irregulaties." In a dramatic turn that seems likely to trigger a new round of anxiety over the stability of the brokerage industry less than a year after the collapse of much larger MF Global, the Cedar Falls, Iowa-based firm told customers that they would be limited to liquidating positions until further notice. The disclosure came hours after founder and owner Russell R. Wasendorf, Sr., was found in his car near the...