Penalties and fines

The SEC's $1.8B off-channel communications crackdown shows how paused protocols can lead to crisis.

JPMorgan Chase executives were supposed to make sure employee communications were archived for regulatory scrutiny. But for years, even the bosses were using their mobile phones to tap out work-related messages — a practice so pervasive that U.S. authorities dropped the hammer Friday, imposing $200 million in fines.

JPMorgan Chase is preparing to pay roughly $200 million to resolve U.S. regulatory investigations into lapses over monitoring employee communications.

The compliance inquiry relates to past disclosures around the Intelligent Portfolios product.

The free trading app’s breakneck growth hurt the same small-time investors it sought to empower, FINRA says.

The penalty stems from lapses tied to a March 2020 outage and allegations that the fintech firm let thousands of clients trade options that might not have been appropriate for them.

The popular trading app omitted information about its payment for order flow practice, the regulator says.

Former CEO John Stumpf agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty to settle civil charges tied to the bank’s fake-accounts scandal. Former community bank head Carrie Tolstedt did not agree to a settlement and is now facing a lawsuit that alleges she committed fraud.

The firm will also pay a penalty and offer to buy back variable annuities the former broker sold to 21 other investors.

During rapid growth, the firm allegedly failed to detect a cascade of red flags.

This is the latest case to involve improperly allocating bonds meant for retail customers and instead selling them to other market participants.

It’s the regulator’s largest restitution order this year.

The firm allegedly provided some clients with misleading information about which charges they were actually paying for.

After resigning last year under pressure from federal policymakers, the former executive received no severance benefits or annual incentive award.

The bank failed to implement its own supervisory procedures around single-inverse ETFs, costing clients millions, the SEC says.

The settlement marks the bank’s largest yet from a series of scandals that claimed two chief executive officers.

To reduce the risk of retiring early, seniors are advised to take on a part-time job or downsize to reduce expenses.

“The bank had better tools and systems to detect employees who did not meet unreasonable sales goals than it did to catch employees” engaging in misconduct, the regulator said.

The bank's former chief executive will pay a $17.5 million penalty and be banned from the industry.

The firm’s supervisory systems did not identify brokers who recommended clients engage in potentially unsuitable early rollovers of UITs, the regulator said.