SEC GOES AFTER UBS FINACIAL ADVISER

The problem with modern American capitalism is that stealing is a good business practice. Proponents of modern capitalism say that people act in their own self interests and therefore everyone you do business with is a thief and everyone should realize that they will be ripped-off every time they do any kind of business. Organizing societies around stealing will result in the long run in very bad results namely, murderous revolutions like the one led by Robes Pierre. The following is a case in which the SEC alleges that a man lived beyond his means by stealing from his clients. The following is an excerpt from the case.

Washington, D.C., March 3, 2011 – The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former financial adviser at UBS Financial Services LLC with misappropriating $3.3 million in a scheme that included bilking investors in a private investment fund he established.
The SEC alleges that Steven T. Kobayashi, who worked in UBS’s Walnut Creek, Calif., office, created a pooled investment fund to invest in life insurance policies. But he wound up stealing much of the money to support his extravagant lifestyle. Kobayashi concealed his fraud by liquidating his customers’ securities and funneling the money back to the fund and its investors.

In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California today filed criminal charges against Kobayashi arising from some of the same alleged misconduct.
“Investors count on their brokers to safeguard their investments,” said Marc Fagel, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office. “It’s difficult to imagine a more flagrant abuse of that trust than the manner in which Kobayashi pocketed his customers’ money and used it to feed his own habits.”
According to the SEC complaint filed today in federal district court in Oakland, Kobayashi established Life Settlement Partners LLC (LSP), a fund that invested in life settlement policies. He raised several million dollars from his UBS customers for the fund. Beginning in early 2006, Kobayashi used LSP’s bank accounts as his personal piggy bank, spending at least $1.4 million in investor funds on expensive cars, prostitutes, and large gambling debts.

The SEC alleges that in an attempt to repay LSP and its investors before they discovered his theft, Kobayashi induced several of his other UBS customers to liquidate securities in their UBS accounts and transfer the proceeds of those sales to entities that he controlled. In this manner, he stole an additional $1.9 million from these investors.
Kobayashi, who lives in Livermore, Calif., agreed to settle the SEC’s charges against him without admitting or denying the allegations. He agreed to a permanent injunction from further violations of the antifraud and other provisions of the federal securities laws, and consented to the institution of public administrative proceedings against him in which he will be permanently barred from associating with entities in the securities industry. The amount of ill-gotten gains and monetary penalties that Kobayashi will be required to pay will be determined by the court at a later date.

The SEC acknowledges the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service.”

Perhaps the modern capitalist state will one day be defined as an epitaph of evil. Real capitalism comes from the heart. It comes from the minds of people who want to better the lives of their fellow human beings. It has nothing to do with just cheating people as the vast number of current capitalist believe. Beat and cheat is the mantra of most capitalists today.