South Florida Arbitration & Litigation Lawyer Blog
Negligent Supervision and Unauthorized Trade FINRA Arbitration and Litigation Attorney, Russell L. Forkey, Esq.
September, 2011:
Bradford Keith Dent (CRD #1588966, Registered Principal, Cordova, Tennessee) was barred from association with any FINRA member in any capacity. The sanction was based on findings that Dent suffered a series of losses from trading in his member firm’s error account, and in an apparent attempt to conceal the losses, he entered unauthorized trades in customer accounts, intending them to offset trades in the error account that would conceal the earlier, unrelated trading losses he had incurred from his firm. The findings stated that the customers had not provided Dent with discretionary authority and one customer incurred a total loss of $126,513.65, which was offset in the error account, reflecting a profit in it equal to the loss in the customer’s account. The findings also stated that Dent admitted to entering the trades in the firm’s error account and in the customers’ accounts when his firm’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) confronted him. The findings also included that Dent failed to respond to FINRA requests for information and to appear for an on-the-record interview. (FINRA Case #2009016893101).