New York Securities Fraud Lawyers Blog
The securities fraud attorneys at Malecki Law are interested in hearing from investors who have complaints against stockbroker Geri Delfino. Ms. Delfino had been employed and registered with Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc., a broker-dealer, from October 2009 to November 2015, according to her publicly available BrokerCheck, as maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Per her BrokerCheck report, Ms. Delfino was previously employed by Ameriprise Advisor Services, Inc. from 2006 to 2009, Advest, Inc. from 2000 to 2006, and A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. from 1991 to 2000.
Ms. Delfino was fined and suspended for 20 days from association with any FINRA member broker-dealer by FINRA according to a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent No. 2015047790401 (AWC). According to the AWC, Ms. Delfino violated NASD Conduct Rule 2510(b) (Discretionary Accounts) and FINRA Rule 2010 (Standards of Commercial Honor and Principles of Trade) for:
“[E]ffecting seven discretionary transactions in the accounts of four customers without obtaining prior written authorization from those customers, and without [Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.] having accepted those accounts as discretionary.”
According to FINRA BrokerCheck records, Ms. Delfino’s suspension starts on July 18, 2016 and ends on August 12, 2016.
The BrokerCheck records also indicate that Ms. Delfino was discharged from her employing firm Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. on October 16, 2015 as a result of “company policy violations related to the use of discretion in non-discretionary accounts.”
Generally speaking, when a broker is said to have made discretionary transactions in a customer’s account, this means that the broker entered a trade of a security without obtaining the client’s authorization prior to executing the transaction. NASD Conduct Rule 2510 requires that before a broker can exercise discretion in a customer’s account, the customer must give written authorization, and that authorization must be accepted in writing by the broker-dealer firm. Brokers who place discretionary trades without first obtaining this authorization from the customer and having it accepted by the firm, may violate Rule 2510.