What the misconduct often looks like
Investment advisers owe their clients a fiduciary duty, meaning they must put the client's interests ahead of their own and disclose conflicts. Investment advisor fraud can look like undisclosed fees or commissions, trades that benefit the adviser's favored accounts at a client's expense, steering clients into products that pay the adviser, or outright misappropriation of client funds. Some cases involve people calling themselves advisers who were never registered. Others involve a broker rather than an adviser, which matters because brokers and advisers are regulated differently and disputes with them usually go to different places. Before anything else, it helps to know exactly what the person was licensed to do.
Checking registration and reading your agreements
Look the person and the firm up on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site and on FINRA's BrokerCheck, which show registration, disciplinary history, and customer complaints. Pull together your advisory agreement, account statements, trade confirmations, and the firm's disclosure brochure, which describes fees and conflicts. The agreement may require arbitration; disputes with brokerage firms usually go to FINRA arbitration, while advisory agreements may point to another arbitration forum or to court. In New York, the Attorney General enforces the state's securities law, but that law does not itself give investors a private lawsuit, so individual claims usually proceed on other legal theories. Report concerns to the SEC or the state as well, but those reports do not replace your own claim.
How we approach a review
We start by reconstructing the account history: what you asked for, what the adviser recommended or did, and how the account performed against what you were told. Sometimes a review shows ordinary investment losses rather than misconduct, and we will tell you if that is what we see. Where it appears there was misconduct, we look at the forum, deadlines that may limit the claim, and whether the firm, a custodian, or insurance can be reached. If you are an adviser facing a client complaint or an SEC inquiry, the same records matter from the other side, and early review can shape your response.
