Gary Begnaud of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, a stockbroker formerly registered with Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner Smith, is identified in a FINRA securities arbitration claim in which the customer seeks unknown compensatory damages based upon the alleged unauthorized trading of mutual funds some two years earlier in 2020 while Begnaud was associated with Merrill Lynch. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Arbitration No. 22-00626 (March 24, 2022).
The claim fails to identify the dollar amount of the damages sought by the customer. Until relatively recently, the stockmarket, at least as measured by the S&P 500, significantly increased in value during this period. Although we have no knowledge of this matter, one may surmize that from 2020 through 2022, the injured customer would have received more than a dozen customer monthly statements showing the existence and value of these allegedly unauthorized mutual fund purchases back in 2020.
Simply for the sake of nostalgia, some may view this claim as the “heads I win, tails you lose,” investment strategy. List v. Fashion Park, Inc., 340 F.2d 457 (2d Cir. 1965) (Section 10b does not establish a scheme of heads I win tails you lose investor’s insurance) (Friendly, J); Titan Group, Inc. v. Faggen, 513 F.2d 234. 239 (2d Cir. 1975).
Begnaud has been registered for 43 years, and has only one other disclosable event, at least according to FINRA Public Disclosure, where a customer filed an investment related civil action back in 1994 involving limited partnership intertests, which of course, were highly fashionable, and subject to considerable litigation at the time. In fact, the litigation of these limited partnership interests back in the 1990s led to the formation of what it is now known as the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association.
Begnaud was with Merrill Lynch from October 1982, and June 2020. Since June 19, 2020, Begnaud has been registered as a stockbroker and investment adviser representative with Janney Montgomery Scott LLC.
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