Mark Edward Smith, Attorney

04/09/2020

I hope this post finds everyone staying safe and healthy in these unsettled times. Just letting everyone know that we are still open for business, just working from home these days. Trying to take every precaution to ensure that your needs are met in a safe and responsible way. Please feel free to call or email if we can help you in any way. Stay safe and be healthy!

06/08/2015

Bank Of New York Mellon To Pay $180
Million To Settle Forex Class Action

The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
(Mellon) will pay $180 million to settle a
putative class action brought by institutional
investors accusing the company of running a
deceptive foreign currency exchange
program. The tentative settlement will
resolve claims brought by the state of Oregon
on behalf of several public pension funds
and others alleging Mellon misled investors
by making deceptive public statements about
its foreign exchange program in violation of
securities laws. “This settlement effectively
resolves virtually all of the currently pending
foreign exchange-related actions, with the
exception of several lawsuits brought by
individual customers,” the company said in
the regulatory filing.

The settlement brings an end to the long-running
multidistrict litigation (MDL) first
brought in 2011, alleging that Mellon told
customers it provided the “best ex*****on”
for foreign currency trades when in reality it
bought the currencies at the lowest price of
the day and sold it at the highest, pocketing
the difference.

In March, Mellon paid $714 million to
settle fraud claims by the SEC, the U.S.
Department of Justice, the New York attorney
general and others over the foreign
exchange program. Mellon also admitted to
certain facts and agreed to fire two executives
implicated in the scheme. According to
prosecutors, Mellon employees admitted to
investigators that the bank neither sought
the best rates for the exchange program’s
customers nor provided the best ex*****on
The investor class sought damages on behalf
of investors who purchased Mellon stock
between February 2008 and October 2011.
The bank had argued last month it should be
able to defend itself separately against each
institutional investor’s claim.

06/08/2015

Bank Of America Settles Foreign Exchange
Lawsuit For $180 Million

Bank of America has paid $180 million in a
settlement to resolve claims it helped rig the
foreign exchange market. The Charlotte based
bank disclosed the settlement amount
in a securities filing. The settlement had
been announced in April by investors
involved in the settlement. The investors—
several pension and hedge funds—accused
Bank of America and some other financial
institutions of conspiring to manipulate
benchmark trading rates in the foreign
exchange market.

The antitrust class action alleged that this
was part of a conspiracy to rig the approximately
$5 trillion-per-day foreign exchange
market. The bank said that it would use its
existing reserves to cover the cost of settling
the suit. The settlement is subject to court
approval.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG settled
the same lawsuit earlier this year, agreeing to
pay $99.5 million and $135 million, respectively.
The settlement amount is covered by
existing legal reserves, Bank of America said
in the filing. The settlement adds to the billions
of dollars Bank of America has paid to
resolve litigation since the financial crisis.
The law yers representing Bank of
America, as part of the settlement, agreed to
cooperate in the Plaintiffs’ continuing investigation
and litigation against nine remaining
banks in federal district court in New York.
At press time it was being said that Citi and
Barclays are in settlement talks. Bank of
America’s settlement should provide more
ammunition for the Plaintiffs in their
negotiations.

Judge Schofield rejected the banks’ claims
that the U.S. Plaintiffs failed to bring enough
evidence of a potential conspiracy, finding
that the facts laid out in the complaint,
including the existence of chat rooms where
traders “congratulated each other on the
manipulation of ‘the Fix,’” were enough that
discovery and trial were needed to determine
their veracity. “The Fix” is an industry
term for the median price of a widely traded
currency 30 seconds before market close
that sets the closing price for the day. Judge

Schofield wrote:
Even the names the FX traders gave
their chat rooms—such as ‘The Cartel,’
‘The Bandits’ Club’ and ‘The Mafia’—
support the inference that the chat
rooms were used for anti-competitive
purposes.

The Plaintiffs, including the Louisiana
Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement
System, filed their complaint alleging rigging
of the $5.4 trillion-per-day foreign exchange
market in 2012. It was alleged that the banks
routinely charged pension funds the worst
possible forex rates when processing transactions
on their behalf. Other Plaintiffs filed
similar class action complaints. They were
eventually consolidated in New York district
court. A series of enforcement actions from
U.S. and other regulators resulted in about
$4.3 billion in fines against the banks. This
definitely helped the Plaintiffs’ claims. Discovery
in the class action was stayed for six
months as the U.S. Department of Justice
continues its investigation into forex rigging.
The case is in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York.

06/08/2015

Regions Agrees To Pay $90 Million To End
Stock Inflation Claims

Regions Financial Corp. will pay $90
million to settle allegations that the bank
misled investors about company accounting
after its 2006 buy of AmSouth Bancorp. The
shareholders alleged that because of Regions’
shoddy internal controls it was not until the
bank came under increased scrutiny after its
October 2008 government bailout that it
admitted $6 billion in so-called goodwill
asset estimates from the $10 billion AmSouth
deal were seriously impaired. Stock prices
fell sharply after the announcement on Jan.
20, 2009. Regions will pay $90 million into a
settlement fund for investors who held stock
from February 2008 to January 2009

06/08/2015

Regions Fined $7.5 Million For Breaking
Overdraft Rules And Will Refund $49
Million To Customers

The federal government has fined Regions
Bank $7.5 million for breaking overdraft
rules and failing to correct the violations for
nearly a year after discovering them. Regions
has refunded $49 million in illegal fees to
consumers and will pay a fine of $7.5 million
to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB). When customers withdraw more
money than is in their checking account, a
bank can advance that money and charge an
overdraft fee. Federal rules that took effect
in 2010 require that customers have to opt-in
to be charged these fees. If customers don’t
opt-in, banks can decline a transaction, but
the banks can’t charge a fee.

Regions allowed their customers to link
their checking accounts to their savings
accounts or lines of credit. That means when
a customer withdraws more than is in their
checking account, that money can automatically
be withdrawn from another
account. But Regions didn’t allow customers
who had these accounts link to opt in for
overdraft coverage. Instead, the bank paid
transactions that were greater than the
balance of all available accounts, charging a
$36 fee for doing so. A Regions’ internal
review found that the linked accounts policy
violated the rule, but the bank didn’t stop the
charges until almost a year later in April
2012. When the compliance department told
senior executives about the violation,
Regions reported the policy to the CFPB and
stopped charging those fees in July 2012.

Regions no longer offers this product,
which offered short-term loans for small
amounts to customers who make regular
deposits into their accounts. Under this
program, Regions would collect payment
from an account, but if payment was larger
than the available balance, cover the transaction
and charge an overdraft fee or reject its
own transaction and charge a fee. Despite
claiming it did not charge these fees, the
bank collected about $1.9 million in fees
from 36,000 customers, according to the
CFPB. Regions voluntarily refunded affected
customers. Regions will hire an independent
consultant to identify any remaining customers
who were charged illegal fees, under the
terms of a consent order filed last month.
Regions also will fix all negative credit
reporting that came as a result of illegal fees.
CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a
statement:

Today the CFPB is taking its first
enforcement action under the rules
that protect consumers against illegal
overdraft fees by their banks. Regions
Bank failed to ask consumers if they
wanted overdraft service before charging
them fees. In the end, hundreds of
thousands of consumers paid at least
$49 million in illegal charges. We take
the issue of overdraft fees very seriously
and will be vigilant about
making sure that consumers receive
the protections they deserve.
Regions is headquartered in Birmingham
and operates in 16 states. The bank has had
numerous problems and definitely needs to
clean up its operations.

06/08/2015

Five Banks Guilty Of Rate-Rigging And Will
Pay More Than $5 Billion In Fines

Swiss banking giant UBS agreed last
month to pay $545 million to settle an
investigation by U.S. authorities into its role in
manipulating interest and currency rates.
UBS agreed to plead guilty to one count of
wire fraud. So far five major banks have
agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges
and pay more than $5.5 billion in collective
penalties to settle charges their traders routinely
manipulated the world’s foreign exchange
market for their own profit. The
Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve
and other U.S. and European authorities and
regulators said corporate units of Citicorp,
JPMorgan Chase, London-based Barclays and
Royal Bank of Scotland acknowledged their
traders rigged foreign exchange prices of
U.S. dollars and euros from Dec. 2007 to Jan.
2013. In “normal times,” such a revelation
would be shocking. But today, it’s just a blip
on the nightly news. The $2.5 billion in criminal
fines levied as part of the resolutions
represent the largest federal anti-trust penalties
ever obtained by U.S. authorities.

Prices the market sets for currencies
“influence virtually every sector of every
economy in the world.” The traders actions,
according to reports from the DOJ, “inflated
the banks’ profits while harming countless
consumers, investors and institutions around
the globe—from pension funds to major corporations,
and including the banks’ own customers.”

Euro-U.S dollar traders at Citicorp,
JPMorgan, Barclays and RBS—self-described
members of the cartel—used an exclusive
electronic chat room and coded language to
manipulate benchmark exchange rates of the
two currencies in ways that benefited their
own trading positions, prosecutors said.

The bank violated terms of the 2012 nonprosecution
agreement that had settled UBS’
involvement in rigging the London Interbank
Offered Rate (Libor). As we have previously
explained, the financial benchmark is used
to set rates on trillions of dollars in mortgages,
loans and credit cards. As a result, UBS
agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire
fraud, pay a $203 million fine and accept a
three-year term of probation for Libor rate
manipulation by its traders. UBS also agreed
to pay $342 million to the Federal Reserve
and make remedial changes to its foreignexchange
business practices. No individual
bank employees were hit with criminal
charges as part of the settlements, but it was
reported that investigations into foreignexchange
issues are continuing.

The criminal settlements mark the latest
result from a global crackdown on systematic
manipulation of financial benchmarks by
bank traders. In all, the five banks have now
paid nearly $9 billion in total criminal and
civil fines and penalties for rigging the foreign-exchange
spot market. Bank officials
took responsibility for the illegal activity, terminating
dozens of traders as investigators
around the world probed foreign exchange
practices. Citi also announced that it has
agreed to a separate $394 million settlement
of a private class-action lawsuit related to the
foreign-exchange activity. The settlement is
subject to court approval.

06/08/2015

Fines On Financial Institutions Were More
Than $7.8 Billion In The First Quarter Of
The Year

Penalties imposed on financial institutions
totaled more than $7.8 billion in the first
quarter of 2015, up 73 percent from the prior
quarter, according to data released last
month by the Committee on Capital Markets
Regulation. There were four mega-settlements
of more than $1 billion that led the
pack. The most recent total eclipsed the
fourth-quarter 2014 clip of $4.5 billion,
which concluded a record $61.7 billion in
penalties last year, the highest recorded by
the nonprofit group since it began researching
such matters. “Data show that financial
institutions in the U.S. continue to face historically
unprecedented public financial penalties,”
the committee said in a news release.
Public financial penalties include class
action settlements that arise from suits
brought by the government and regulatory
penalties that follow enforcement actions.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC) are typically the agencies
most active in enforcing such actions.
Many settlements reflect continued fallout
from the financial crisis. In February Morgan
Stanley paid $2.6 billion to end a U.S. Department
of Justice investigation into its mortgage-backed
securities deals. That accord,
which was the largest first-quarter deal, followed
the investment bank’s tentative $275
million settlement to resolve an SEC investigation
into subprime residential mortgage-backed
securities, (RMBS), that Morgan
Stanley sponsored and underwrote in 2007.

German financial giant Deutsche Bank AG
in April agreed to pay $2.5 billion globally—
about $2.1 billion to U.S. agencies—and
entered into a deferred prosecution agreement
to settle claims with United States and
United Kingdom regulators that its traders
helped rig the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor) and other key benchmarks.
Much like previous Libor settlements, no
individuals at Deutsche Bank entered a guilty
plea or were named in court documents;
however, the New York regulator forced
Deutsche Bank to terminate seven employees
and install an independent monitor.
Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $600 million to
the N.Y. Department of Financial Services,
$800 million to the CFTC, $775 million to
the Justice Department and £227 million
($357 million) to the Financial Conduct
Authority.

In February, Standard & Poor’s Financial
Services LLC also agreed to pay $1.375 billion
to settle lawsuits brought by the Department
of Justice (DOJ) and 20 attorneys general
over the rosy ratings it assigned to large securities
that turned toxic and exacerbated the
financial crisis. Additionally, Commerzbank
AG, in March agreed to enter into a deferred
prosecution agreement and to pay $1.45
billion to New York and federal regulators
and law enforcement agencies, in addition to
firing five employees implicated in the processing
of transactions for Iranian and Sudanese
entities and enabling a $2 billion fraud
at Olympus Corp.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based Committee
on Capital Markets Regulation, which advocates
improved regulation of capital markets,
consists of 36 members across finance,
investment, business, law and accounting
and academic circles. It’s led by Harvard Law
School professor Hal Scott. The research
group has previously called on the Federal
Reserve to better coordinate its stress test
rules on financial institutions required under
the Dodd-Frank Act with other regulators,
including the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp., and with its existing stress testing
procedures.

04/25/2013

I have the best clients a lawyer could ever hope to ever be able to help. A heartfelt thanks to all of my clients for allowing me to assist you with your legal matters. I would like to start posting again with helpful information.....anyone have a suggestion or something they would like to know more about?

03/06/2013

Great article in here about Medicare Part B.....worth the time to read! (Reprinted by permission)

Lifestyle magazine for 50+ demographic.

10/05/2012

Well, this week marks my third year in practice! Three years ago I was looking at my big empty desk wishing it had some work on it....now I'm looking at all the work on my desk wishing I had more time to get it all done. Many many thanks to my family, friends, coworkers, and associates for your support!! This has been the most rewarding journey....and more to come

02/03/2012

Sprint users should check their accounts after Feb 5th to see if you qualify for a discount/incentive from Sprint on a new phone...

01/19/2012

Well, it looks like my discussion board went away. I will research this and see what went wrong. Until then, have you reviewed your will and other important documents this year??? It's time!!