Failure to Comply with FINRA Request Terminates Broker Lance Shaw’s Securities Industry Career – Follow Up

His former firm, LPL Financial, is facing serious accusations

In November, we chronicled the history of Lance Shaw and why FINRA barred him from ever working as a broker again. Over the course of his 15-year career, he was involved in eight customer disputes, with the majority of them related to unauthorized trading.

One of those disputes occurred while Shaw was working for LPL Financial, LLC, and it involved allegations of unsuitable investments and excessive trading of a client’s retirement account. The damages granted totaled $175,000.

Recently, LPL was again in the news for all the wrong reasons. In early December of 2016, the top financial regulator in Massachusetts charged the firm – along with one of their Boston-based investment advisers, Roger Zullo – with fraudulently selling annuities.

According to the state complaint, Zullo defrauded clients, lied to supervisors, and fabricated suitability profiles to sell identical high-commission variable annuities in order to enrich himself and his firm. LPL was charged with a failure to supervise.

The complaint said that LPL had a “paper-thin compliance review process” and that the firm didn’t act appropriately. Though his supervisors may not have known what Zullo was doing, the firm was still responsible for his actions.

In a civil complaint, Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin charged Zullo for earning $1.8 million in commissions over a three-year span by mostly selling the same Polaris Platinum annuity to retirees and healthcare workers.

In addition to the clients Zullo handled in that three-year period, even more people could be affected, Galvin said. According to what Zullo told Securities Division investigators, he began targeting clients in medical facilities dating all the way back to 1987.

If any of your investments were handled by Lance Shaw, Roger Zullo, or LPL Financial, it’s possible that you were the victim of fraud. To learn about what you should do now, get in touch with the Silver Law Group.

We specialize in fighting for clients who have lost investments at the hands of brokers and financial advisors who have taken advantage of their positions. Scott Silver is the current chair of the American Trial Lawyers Association Securities and Financial Fraud Group and our expert legal team represents clients in securities law arbitration cases to help them recover funds and get a sense of justice. We operate on a contingency-fee basis, so our team does not profit unless we recover your funds.

You’ll be able to speak with a securities arbitration attorney to find out if you can recover lost money. Contact us now for a free consultation.