Pinnacle Partners Financial Corp. Investment Losses

According to the Investment News, FINRA has suspended the broker-dealer, Pinnacle Partners Financial Corp., for allegedly continuing to sell fraudulent oil and gas private placements after the agency already put a temporary cease-and-desist order against it.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. on Dec. 3 filed a complaint against Pinnacle Partners Financial Corp. and its president and owner, Brian K. Alfaro. In that complaint, the regulator alleged that Mr. Alfaro operated a “boiler room” where registered representatives placed thousands of cold calls weekly to solicit investments in Alfaro’s captive oil- and gas-drilling joint ventures. Pinnacle raised over $10 million from more than 100 investors for offerings that FINRA alleged “materially misrepresented or omitted facts,” according to its complaint.

But despite the temporary cease-and-desist order stemming from the complaint, Pinnacle continued to “market oil and gas offerings through material misrepresentations, with the intent to deceive investors,” Brad Bennett, FINRA’s executive vice president and chief of enforcement, wrote in statement.

According to FINRA’s statement, Pinnacle and Alfaro “deliberately attempted to mislead investors by deleting unfavorable information from well operator reports and providing them with doctored maps, which omitted numerous dry, plugged or abandoned wells near their projected drilling sites.” The complaint also alleges that in one instance, Mr. Alfaro collected more than $500,000 for a well that was never drilled, and used those funds for unrelated personal and business expenses.

Oil and gas partnership and private placement investments are extremely complex and risky and should only be recommended to sophisticated investors.

Recovery of Investment Losses

If you have questions about investments you made with Pinnacle Partners Financial Corp., the securities attorneys of The White Law Group may be able to help.  To speak with an attorney, please contact the firm’s Chicago office at 888-637-5510.

The White Law Group, LLC is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, investor protection, and securities regulation/compliance law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Vero Beach, Florida.

For more information on The White Law Group, please visit our website at http://whitesecuritieslaw.com.