Ex-CUNA advisor barred following client lawsuit claiming theft

FINRA has barred a former financial advisor who was accused in a lawsuit in January of swindling a Georgia couple out of $330,000 in retirement savings.

Stacy Cheney-Jamison was banned for refusing to cooperate with FINRA’s investigation into allegations that she was involved in private securities transactions and falsification of client account forms while employed as an advisor with CUNA Brokerage Services, according to her settlement with FINRA.

As a CUNA advisor, Cheney-Jamison provided investment advisory services to customers of IBM Southeastern Employees’ Credit Union, one of the credit unions that CUNA serves as third-party broker dealer.

Her attorney, Alan Wolper of law firm Ulmer & Berne, said Cheney-Jamison could not afford to fight FINRA and decided instead to focus her energy on the civil suit filed against her in Cobb County State Court.

In the lawsuit, Edward Ray, an IBM retiree, and his wife, Yvonne, allege that Cheney-Jamison and another advisor — Christopher Parris, an advisor now barred from the industry — acted in concert to defraud the Rays of their retirement savings by using at least two companies they either jointly or separately owned. The two met with the couple in a branch of IBM Southeastern Employees’ Credit Union in Kennesaw, Georgia, and convinced them to transfer some $330,000 to CUNA but the money never made it to their CUNA accounts because it was diverted, the couple claimed in the lawsuit.

Cheney-Jamison is denying any wrong-doing vis-à-vis the Rays, or any customers, according to Wolper.

“She is defending herself in the civil action they filed, and she expects to prevail there when the truth comes out, which is that someone other than my client sold the Rays whatever they bought,” he said.

In settling the action with FINRA, Cheney-Jamison neither admitted nor denied the allegations against her.

Cheney-Jamison worked for CUNA Brokerage Services from August 2016 to August 2017, when she voluntarily resigned amid an investigation into the “nature and scope of certain referrals made by Cheney-Jamison to a non-affiliated third party,” FINRA said.

Phil Tschudy, a spokesman for CUNA, declined to comment on the matter.