The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "brokerage" ...
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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Insurance Investigation
The Star examined the insurance industry, using consumer complaints totaling more than 10,000 pages, interviewed hundreds of sources and gathered records for all 50 states. After sifting through information regarding the best and worst companies for consumer complaints both nationwide and in Kansas and Missouri, the Star discovered that Allstate Insurance of Northbrook, Illinois "had the most complaints for claims handing in the country," and "Farmer's Insurance Exchange of Los Angeles led all insurers for complaints over using credit histories to set premiums - a practice consumer advocates call discriminatory." In Kansas, American Investors Life Insurance Co. Inc. of Topeka had the worst complaint record of any annuity provider in the state. The study also found widespread fraud, and also that the insurance industry receives more complaints than banks and stock brokerages. Adding to the problems are the people who have scammed billions of dollars out of insurance companies, which raises premiums across the board.
Tags: insurance; fraud; American Investors Life Insurance Co. Inc.; Allstate Insurance of Northbrook, Illinois; Farmer's Insurance Exchange of Los Angeles
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Open Secrets Series
This series is a year long investigation than led to a dozen harmful activities on Wall Street. Among other stories, there is a secret investment pool for the rich, providing them with coveted inside information on stocks. Another story disclosed the way brokerage firms routinely pass market information to favored clients who pay high commissions.
Tags: Wall Street investigations; Wall Street Journal; investments; stocks; brokerage firms; market information; trade; corporate boards; investors; mutual-funds
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Trade Secrets
California set up foreign-trade offices around the world to boost the state's exports and lure investors from other countries. However, documents obtained by the Register showed the trade offices repeatedly made false and overblown claims about the business deals they said they were instrumental in landing. In their last annual report, the offices took credit-at least 31 times on deals totaling $4.2 million-for export or investment deals in which they played little or no role. Six times, they took credit for deals that, in reality, did not happen. Officials in the state agency that had oversight responsibility for the offices said they never checked the accuracy of the offices' claims and believed they had no reason to.
Tags: commerce; trade offices; annual report; California Legislature; California Technology Trade and Commerce Agency; California Assembly; California Senate; brokerage; toxic-cleanup; Gigante USA; South Africa; Tokyo; Taiwan; Singapore; Tri-C Manufacturing; exports; Onlyone Products Inc.; H/A International; United Food and Commercial Workers union; U.S. Department of Commerce; California Bureau of State Audits; Department of Finance; private enterprise
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Wiped Out
BUSINESSWEEK tells the tale of how roughly 90 Proctor & Gamble workers were lured into quitting their jobs by the siren's call of a local stockbroker who promised them untold riches. Bill Gibbs, the stockbroker, convinced older workers to quit their jobs so he could gain control of their company-funded retirement accounts. As Gibbs' original investments began to falter, he sank his clients' portfolios heavily into tech and Internet stocks just as those sectors were peaking and about to begin devastating declines. Within a year, most of these workers saw their life savings wiped out.
Tags: A.G. Edwards; Procter & Gamble Co.; oil; health benefits; stockbroker; investing; life insurance; retirees; tech stocks; Internet stocks; portfolio; J.D. Power and Associates Inc.; First Union Brokerage; high yields; Dow Jones Industrial Average; Dow Dividend Strategy; Individual Retirement Account; Chevron; General Electric; General Motors; International Paper; 3M; high risk stocks; bankruptcy
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Focus in Fund Scandal Turns to Bear Stearns; Oppenheimer's Sassano and the Market Timers; The Money Running Dreams of Michael Sassano; Canary Capital Broker Could Face Criminal Charges
The Street finds out that the mutual-fund industry, usually seen as squeaky clean $ 7 trillion worth is riddled with systematic fraud. Street's reporter is led by his sources in brokerage, law and the regulatory world to two identities that are the key players instrumenting this corrupt mechanism. One of them is Bear Sterns, a major Wall Street institution that was coming under regulatory scrutiny. And the other, was Oppenheimer & Co. broker Michael Sassano who had worked with a disproportionate number of the scandal's players.
Tags: investors; Kaplan Securities; Empire Financial Holding; NYSE; Wall Street
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The State's Paid "Volunteer"
These reports uncovered falsification of the review of vendors for an $885,000 state contract. The reporters also found that the "volunteer" for the state who managed the bidding process was no volunteer at all, but was in fact receiving hefty brokerage commissions through the state's health insurance program.
Tags: contracts; government corruption; radio; tape; CD; transcript included
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Schwab vs Wall Street
Having redefined the business, first by founding the brokerage to exploit the end of fixed-price stock trading commissions in 1975, Schwab is looking for innovation again. BusinessWeek investigates and analyzes the latest strategy of Wall Street's famous challenger who aims to extend his business to advising from discount brokerage alone. The story says that though Schwab's might not be the most experienced for large-scale advise, his often overlooked innovations have run over his competitors.
Tags: Chuck; brokerage; online trading
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How Much do Brokers Have to Hide? Chances are, your money isn't in banks --it's in brokerage accounts. And the people you're counting on to watch over it may not have your best interests at heart.
The article explains the inner workings of the stock market in such a way that also exposes a horrific amount of shady and fraudulent deals being carried out.
Tags: securities industry; SEC; National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD); fraud; Central Registration Depository
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Hot For U.S. Stocks, Foreigners Get Burned In Regulatory Limbo
The prospect of investing in American stocks is a tempting option for Europeans and other internationals. But beware, says the WSJ, for a stock brokerage company called International Asset Management (IAM) is busy duping novice investors by selling them obscure shares. To worsen matters even the regulatory bodies refuse to cooperate. The report includes accounts by rookie investors in Dublin, Australia and Zurich who have been cheated by IAM and its various other affiliates elsewhere.
Tags: Shares; stocks; Securities and Exchange Commission; brokers; International Asset Management