September 1, 2009
Once again FINRA demonstrates that it considers its primary mission to be the protection of the worst of the worst in the securities industry. That should not be surprising considering that FINRA officials were hired by them, but at some point the Commission should give some minimal attention to protecting the investing public rather than the predatory brokers who prey on it. Honest brokers without compliance problems have no stake in this issue.
FINRA should not be allowed to launder crooked brokers' records after a minimal two year sabatical from defrauding customers. Among the multitude of reasons for which the Commission should reject this overtly anti-customer amendment are the following:
1) Customers, being universally bound to an expensive, forced arbitration system run by and for these same brokers, should have at least the same amount of time to check a broker's CRD as the eligibility period to file a forced arbitration claim. That would be six years. Otherwise, a broker defrauds any number of customer, goes on a vacation with his ill-gotten gains, and 24 months later his regulatory record is scrubbed by FINRA and no information is available on the subject broker during a period well within most state statutes of limitations.
2) A broker with a long and checkered compliance rap sheet retires for two years in order to clear his record. He then signs on as a non-public arbitrator in FINRA's forced arbitration forum and his prior record has been closed, denying the defruaded customer of the resource to evaluate the industry credentials of an obviously unacceptable arbitrator.
I encourage the Commission to stop the outrageously anti-customer conduct of FINRA, starting with this amendment.