We’ve already covered Joel’s infuriating response to the sentencing brief and now we’ll cover . I don’t focus as much on Ed, probably because we just don’t hear as much about him. My theory is that while he had his fingers all up in those numbers, he didn’t do as much of the day-to-day scamming. To start, this will only be busted up into two parts. One for the majority of the filing and one for the character statements. And we’re off and running! His lawyer didn’t lay the whole “upstanding member of the community” on too thick while recognizing that he’s done harm to others. I would have thrown the phrase “considerable and irreparable harm” in there somewhere, but we can’t win them all. And then they follow up with this noise again. Like Joel, Ed lived in a land of denial for months before finally admitting wrongdoing. The absolutely best time to come clean was in 2001 when the $11 million contract fell through. It would have been easier and they would have been fifteen years younger. Probably would have only had to pay a fine for unregistered securities. The next really good milestone to come clean was
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Joel’s Cease and Desist
Unable to locate a document as old as the Cease and Desist on Missouri’s Securities site, I emailed them. Lo and behold, I got a response! A paralegal was kind enough to forward a copy of the Cease and Desist order, issued in 1988. In August 1988, the Commissioner found out that in 1983, Prudential Petroleum offered and sold a filing service to provide investors oil and gas leases through the federal lottery in the State of Missouri. The State considers this to be “soliciting investments for a filing service.” Prudential Petroleum was not registered and did receive an exemption to do this. In September 1988, the Commissioner sent a letter to Joel asking for his exemption or why he thought he didn’t need to register to sell securities in their state. They also wanted Missouri investor information. His wife, Carol, signed for the letter, which makes sense since that was their residence. Joel’s lawyer responded in October 1988 stating that the company was an “advisory company which assisted individuals in entering the oil and gas lottery run by the United States Government.” I’d love for someone to explain to me how that’s different from “soliciting investments for a filing
Continue readingJoel, Investment Advisor Extraordinaire
I’ve managed to dig up some information on Joel’s old investment advisor license using some good old fashioned internet sleuthing. I’m not finished, but it’s so long ago there’s no guarantee that there’s more to find. Once upon a time, Joel was an investment advisor in the State of California. I pulled his FINRA report from…FINRA.org for free. The horror! He worked for a brokerage firm called CECO Financial Services (now defunct) from 05/06/1985 to 08/20/1986. None of that is interesting. What is interesting is that this report has a little black mark on it. On 11/22/88 someone reported a regulatory event – a Cease & Desist Order in Missouri: Then it looks like Joel Responded. All the quoted spelling and grammatical errors are his, by the way. Prudential Petroleum was registered in the State of California on 9/23/1982 and their last state filing was on 2/22/1985. So, it appears that Prudential Petroleum got in trouble for soliciting potential clients by mail in Missouri without a license, but Joel doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Now, I looked up if the whole filing service thing could be scammy since it certainly seems like an excellent opportunity to fleece someone
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