As part of the settlement, LPL will pay more than $4.8 million.
Eugenio Garcia Jimenez, Jr., is an unregistered advisor and is not affiliated with LPL. Last December, the regulator charged him with defrauding the Municipality of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. The agency also said he misappropriated $7.1 million of taxpayer funds.
In 2016, Garcia opened an LPL account as part of his scheme. LPL did not verify certain information provided by Garcia. Because of this the firm could not fulfil its obligation to accurately document its own identification procedures.
“And even though LPL was in possession of suspicious and conflicting customer account information, according to the SEC’s order, LPL received assets transferred from a previous firm and processed wire transfers resulting in Garcia’s further misappropriation of millions of dollars from the municipal corporation,” according to Investment News.
Three years ago FINRA fined LPL $2.75 million, in part, for not filing hundreds of suspicious activity reports related to its anti-money laundering program.