Mark L. Hopkins of Grand Blanc Michigan, a stockbroker formerly registered with American Portfolio Financial Services was charged by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission with the theft of $1.2 million from five of his customer accounts. United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Mark L. Hopkins (E.D. Michigan).
According to the Complaint, bginning in at least 2017, Hopkins began soliciting his brokerage customers about a new investment opportunity at a local credit union new branch office. This “investment opportunity” was fictitious and was a sham. The local credit union offered no such investment program.
In August 2017, Hopkins solcited three of his American Portfolio customers including a married couple in their sixties and and 87 year old person to invest in his fake Investment Program. According to Hopkins, the Investment Program would have been no more than six to nine months, and would return a six to seven percent profit.
Hopkins customers wrote checks made out to the local credit union and sent these checks to Hopkins. However, rather than investing these funds Hopkins deposited them directly into an account that he controlled at the local credit union, and later provided these customers with fabricated account
statements.
Hopkins was “permitted to resign” from American Portfolio Financial Services in December 2018. In March 2019, and again in July 2019, two of Hopkins customer filed FINRA Arbitration claims against American Portfolio Financial Services based upon Hopkin’s conduct and theft of their funds. Hopkins was barred by FINRA for the failure to cooperate with its investigation of this matter, and November 2019, Hopkins was barred by the State of Michigan.
Notwithstanding the foregoing and the SEC’s charges that Hopkins stole $1.2 million from five of his American Portfolio Financial Services customers, FINRA Public Disclosure shows that these FINRA Arbitration claims are still pending.
