Peter Orlando (CRD #1142715) is a former registered broker, last employed with SCF Securities, Inc. (CRD #47275) of Fall River, MA. Previous employers include MetLife Securities (CRD #14251), Morgan Stanley (CRD #149777 and #8209), and Investors Capital Group (CRD #30613) He has been in the industry since 1983. His current employer and employment status is unknown.
Orlando is the subject of a regulatory disciplinary action involving one of his clients. From August through September of 2014, Orlando allegedly obtained control of the financial affairs of an elderly widow (named “DW” in the complaint.) He became the primary beneficiary and executor of her will, with his wife as the contingent beneficiary. He obtained two powers of attorney (POA), one for health and one known as a “durable POA.”
It is against MetLife’s policies for a representative to become involved in a client’s financial affairs, except in the case of family members. There is no indication that the client was also a family member. In addition to a opening a joint account with Orlando, the client also changed her will, closed two bank accounts in favor of the joint one, and gave him two powers of attorney. Orlando never notified the firm that he was acting as her personal representative in her affairs.
Using his position of trust to gain control, he convinced his client that she needed to sell a variable annuity that she had with the firm in order for him to help her with her financial affairs. The client paid nearly $4,000 in various charges and surrender fees. This annuity included a rider called a GMIB (“Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit”), which she paid extra for and would contribute to her monthly income in the future. Once the brokerage account was closed and the annuity surrendered, she lost the automatic monthly payments as well as the future income she would have received from it.
In late September 2014, DW’s family discovered that Orlando had taken over her financial affairs, and took steps to remove him. The family hired a new attorney, and Orlando was removed from her will and bank accounts and the POAs were revoked.
During the subsequent internal investigation, MetLife discovered that Orlando had two signed blank forms in his desk for DW: a Variable Annuity Withdrawal Form and a Request for Electronic Transfer of Funds. The firm did not allow brokers to keep signed forms in their possession for future use, and forbid them from having clients sign forms ahead of time. During the investigation, Orlando resigned from MetLife in December 2014.
Orlando has two previous disclosures: one, a claim that was denied in 2013 after a client alleged that a variable annuity purchased through Orlando was “misrepresented and not appropriate.”
His first disclosure was in 1993, when Orlando was discharged from John Hancock Distributors (CRD #468) for failing to notify the firm of “outside business activities.” Orlando countered that he did indeed verbally notify the firm of his own company’s incorporation, but the firm terminated his NASD licensure (not the NASD). He was never told that the notification had to be in writing.
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