Ex-LPL broker let go for racist directive must pay $820K

A former LPL Financial broker is on the hook for more than $820,000 nearly five years after she was fired for sending a racist directive to her staff.

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel this week ordered Eileen Cure of Cure & Associates in Nederland, Texas, to pay $821,504.71 in total for failing to repay recruiting loans used to bring her over to LPL in 2018. Roughly three years after that recruitment, Cure was let go from LPL after a TikTok user posted a photo of a message Cure apparently sent to her staff after interviewing a Black candidate.

The message read: "i specifically said no blacks. i'm not a prejudice person, but our clients are 90% white and i need to cater to them. so that interview was a complete waste of my time."

While at LPL, Cure was technically an independent contractor who could use the firm "as a limited agent to solicit purchases of securities and investments offered through LPL in its capacity as broker/dealer," according to an agreement cited in other legal filings. She said in a separate lawsuit filed in 2022 against LPL that she was overseeing $40 million in client assets when she joined the firm and $65 million when her affiliation was severed roughly three years later.

READ MORE: Advisor who allegedly said 'no Blacks' is fired from LPL

Claims and counterclaims in LPL's FINRA arbitration case

About two years after LPL let Cure go, it filed a claim in FINRA arbitration for $122,574 it contended she had left unpaid on a pair of promissory notes used to recruit her from the brokerage HD Investment Services, now Avantax Wealth Management. Promissory notes are essentially loans that are forgiven over time as long as the recruited advisor who receives them doesn't leave for a rival firm or isn't let go for cause.

Besides the $122,574 outstanding on her promissory notes, Cure was ordered to pay $45,320 in interest, more than $640,300 to cover LPL's attorney's fees and other legal costs and $13,300 to cover FINRA fees. LPL had initially made claims for more than $2 million for legal expenses, some of which the arbitrators rejected after finding the firm had not met the "burden of proof regarding the reasonableness of this request."

LPL did not return a request for comment. Around the time Cure was let go, LPL issued a statement saying, "We will not tolerate discrimination of any kind in our LPL community," and that, "following our process for review of adviser conduct, Ms. Cure is no longer a client of the firm."

READ MORE: LPL advisor allegedly says she will not hire Black applicants

The arbitrators also rejected various counterclaims from Cure, who had sought compensation for loss of income, damage to her reputation and expungement of the reason for her firing from FINRA records, among other things. After being let go by LPL, Cure was at an advisory firm called Wealth Management of Kentucky for a little more than a year.

Cure is no longer registered as a broker with FINRA or an investment advisor with the SEC. Her BrokerCheck page lists five customer disputes, all concerning alleged recommendations of unsuitable investments.

She and two of her then business ventures, Cure & Associates and Premier Wealth & Retirement Management, sued LPL in federal court in Texas in 2022 over allegations of breach of contract and tortious interference. That dispute was stayed the following year pending a resolution in FINRA arbitration.