Wilkowski Law LLC

09/13/2023

St. Louis Dispatch reports on our lawsuit to stop unnecessary fan injuries at Dozer Park:

A woman who was hit in the eye by a foul ball says the Peoria Chiefs have shirked their duty to protect fans by not installing protective netting.

08/19/2023

The Peoria Journal Star reports on our lawsuit against the Peoria Chiefs:

Peoria native Sandra Klatt was hit in the face during a Chiefs baseball game in 2011. Now, she's suing to see protective netting extended at the ballpark.

01/25/2023

This is a good overview of the arbitration/mediation process with a broker-dealer:

The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy is issuing this Investor Bulletin to help educate investors about the arbitration and mediation processes involving a customer dispute with a broker-dealer.

12/30/2022

FINRA recently warned of small-cap IPOs that have hallmarks of classic "pump-and-dump" schemes.

Some things these IPO frauds may have in common:

1. They're small: usually less than $25 million raised and fewer than 20 million shares.

2. These companies are not US-based. (They're often from China.)

3. Foreign broker dealers, especially in Hong Kong, are allocated huge amounts of the shares--90% or more. This limits the supply available to the public and makes the stock easier to pump (and dump).

4. Huge numbers of shares get allocated to a small number of investors. Risky for same reason as #3.

5. Suspicious accounts opened in the name of foreign nationals. The accounts are then used to inflate the share price.

6. Foreign omnibus accounts (i.e., a collection of many individual accounts) that manage to sell all their shares at the top of the pump.

7. Big spikes in the share price in the days after the shares are listed with no connection to news or other important events that typically move a stock's price. Then, the price plummets.

8. Use of social media to find investors. Sometimes bad actors use a misdirected social media message to start a relationship with someone they hope will eventually invest in the IPO.

Read FINRA's notice: https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/notices/22-25

And contact Wilkowski Law if you think you've been defrauded: https://wilkowskilaw.com/contact/

12/23/2022

2022 saw a huge amount of fraud in cryptocurrency, according to the Financial Stability Oversight Council Annual Report.

In just three months, "between January 1, 2021 – March 31, 2022, the FTC reported that over 46,000 people lost more than $1 billion worth of crypto-assets due to scams and fraud, with an overall median loss of approximately $2,600."

Among the biggest complaints? Initial token/coin offerings, price manipulation, and high-yield investment schemes.

What will we see in 2023?

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/261/FSOC2022AnnualReport.pdf