You know that your industry has a problem --- a serious trust issue --- when a
New York Times columnist sums up the case against financial advisor Matthew Weitzman (see yesterday's post about fraud and the SEC) thusly: "So most readers of this newspaper could be victims in other similar situations." (It should be noted that the Times columnist, Ron Lieber, was a client of the alleged theiving advisor. (Lieber says he didn't lose any money in the scam.)
According to an SEC complaint filed yesterday, Weitzman stole money from his "merely upper middle class" clients --- one of whom was on his death bed and had mentioned to Weitzman that he wanted to be sure his wife was taken care of when the inevitable finally arrived.
It is truly incredible, such stories. Alas, it often takes a bear market (i.e. client withdrawal requests) to discover some of these (ahem, alleged) frauds.