FORMER CEO AGREES TO RETURN BONUS MONEY RECEIVED WHILE HIS COMPANY WAS COOKING THE BOOKS

(RARE AND/OR WELL DONE!) The following excerpt is from the SEC website: “Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, 2011 –The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that the former chief executive officer and chairman of CSK Auto Corporation has agreed to return $2.8 million in bonus compensation and stock profits that he received while the company was committing accounting fraud. Maynard L. Jenkins of Scottsdale, Ariz., was not personally charged by the SEC for the company’s misconduct, however he is still required under Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to reimburse CSK Auto for incentive-based compensation and stock sale profits that he received during the company’s fraudulent period. The SEC filed court papers against Jenkins in July 2009 saying he violated the SOX “clawback” provision by failing to reimburse the company. It marked the agency’s first SOX clawback case against an individual who was not alleged to have otherwise violated the securities laws. "CEOs should know that they can be deprived of bonuses or stock profits they received while accounting fraud was occurring on their watch," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. Rosalind Tyson, Director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office, added, “Jenkins received incentive-based pay while CSK Auto was fraudulently overstating its income to shareholders. His bonuses and stock profits are now being rightfully returned to the company for the benefit of the shareholders.” The settlement with Jenkins is subject to court approval. Jenkins has agreed to reimburse $2,796,467 to O’Reilly Automotive Inc., which has since acquired CSK Auto. The SEC previously charged four former CSK Auto executives who perpetrated the accounting fraud, and separately charged the company for filing false financial statements for fiscal years 2002 to 2004. The company settled the charges, and the litigation against three of the former executives is continuing (CSK’s former chief operating officer has since died). The U.S. Department of Justice brought a criminal indictment against those same executives, who have pleaded guilty to various charges. CSK Auto recently entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ in which it agreed to pay a $20.9 million penalty. The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Dabney O’Riordan, Robert Conrrad, Rhoda Chang, Spencer Bendell, and Lorraine Echavarria in the Los Angeles Regional Office. The litigation effort was led by Donald Searles. The SEC thanks the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, and U.S. Postal Service for their substantial assistance in the investigation.”

INVESTMENT ADVISOR CHARGED WITH COMMITTING WIRE FRAUD

The following excerpt comes from the SEC website: “The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts has charged Andrey C. Hicks of Boston, Mass., in a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday, October 28, 2011. Hicks was charged with committing wire fraud, attempting to commit wire fraud, and aiding and abetting wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sections 1343, 1349, and 2. On October 26, 2011, the SEC filed an emergency enforcement action charging Hicks and Locust Offshore Management, LLC, his investment advisory firm, with fraud in connection with misleading prospective investors about their supposed quantitative hedge fund and diverting investor money to the money manager’s personal bank account. The SEC alleges in its complaint that Hicks and his advisory firm made misrepresentations about his education, work experience, and the hedge fund’s auditor, prime broker/custodian, and corporate status when soliciting individuals to invest in the purported hedge fund, called Locust Offshore Fund, Ltd. By making these representations and creating other indicia of legitimacy, the SEC alleged that Hicks may have obtained at least $1.7 million from 10 investors and may have misappropriated at least a portion of these funds for personal expenses. In the Commission’s action, the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order on October 26 that, among other things, freezes the assets of the money manager, his advisory firm, and the hedge fund. On October 28, 2011, the Court converted the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction that will continue the asset freeze and other relief until further order of the Court.”

SEC OPEN MEETING: SEC/CFTC SYTEMIC RISK DATA FORM

“by Chairman Mary Schapiro U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Washington, D.C. October 26, 2011 Good morning. This is an open meeting of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, 2011. Today, the Commission will consider adoption of a joint SEC/CFTC form to collect critical systemic risk data about hedge funds and other private funds. This data will assist the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) in assessing the systemic risk that these funds may pose. This private fund data collection is mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act. The data collection form we are adopting today — termed “Form PF” for “private fund” — was the result of extensive and collaborative consultation with fellow FSOC members as well as coordination with international regulators. As a result, we have produced a document that will address the dramatic lack of private fund information available to regulators today while easing the burden on private fund managers producing the data, so that the same data collection approaches and protocols apply cross-border where appropriate. This private fund data collection initiative follows from the lessons learned during the financial crisis — lessons about the importance of monitoring and reducing the possibility that a sudden shock or failure of a financial institution will cascade through the entire financial system. The Dodd-Frank Act sought to address this issue, in part, by creating the FSOC to carry out this monitoring role and by requiring the SEC to collect information from private fund advisers, to inform the Council in its assessment of systemic risk. Form PF data will give the FSOC new insight into private fund activities and greatly enhance the FSOC’s risk-monitoring mission. Form PF data will be utilized by regulators to assess systemic risk. It will be complemented by the new Form ADV data about private funds, which provides both regulators and the investing public information about a private fund’s size, its managers, and the entities that serve critical “gatekeeper” functions, such as auditors and custodians. “Tiered” Reporting For hedge funds, private equity funds, and liquidity funds, the information required on Form PF would be “tiered” so that we would receive more detailed information from larger private fund advisers, rather than imposing the same reporting requirements for all private funds. In addition, in a change from the proposal, we are adopting a minimum reporting requirement of $150 million so that smaller private fund advisers would not be required to file Form PF at all, in part because these smaller advisers would have a minimal impact on a broad-based systemic risk analysis. While the group of large private fund advisers is relatively small in number, it represents a large majority of private funds’ assets under management. For instance, the rule would require heightened reporting from hedge fund advisers managing at least $1.5 billion in hedge fund assets. And, although this heightened reporting threshold would apply to only about 230 U.S.-based hedge fund advisers, these advisers manage more than an estimated 80 percent of the assets under management. Reporting by Large Private Equity Managers Similarly, SEC staff estimates that approximately 155 U.S.-based private equity fund advisers managing over $2 billion in private equity fund assets would be subject to the heightened private equity reporting. In response to commenters, we have increased the private equity fund manager thresholds to target those advisers that have the most influence over the private equity market. At the same time, however, we believe that we still will receive heightened reporting from managers representing 75 percent of the private equity market. This will provide FSOC members the information they need to monitor the leveraged loan and private equity markets. In addition, in general, the data collection form will require substantially less information from advisers managing large private equity funds than the large hedge fund and liquidity funds advisers. This is because, after consultation with staff representing FSOC members, we believe private equity funds have less potential to pose systemic risks than other types of private funds. Timing and Frequency of Reporting The private fund data collection we are implementing will play an important role in supporting the framework created by the Dodd-Frank Act. It is designed to ensure that regulators have a view into financial market activities of potential systemic importance. At the same time, however, and in consultation with FSOC, we are making several changes at adoption that we believe address issues raised by commenters, while still preserving the utility of the data collection for FSOC. The strongest concerns voiced on the proposal related to the timing and frequency of the reporting. We want the information that will be reported to regulators on Form PF to be useful. It will not be useful if it is rushed or incomplete. As a result, we are extending the filing deadlines from 15 days to 60 days for larger hedge fund advisers. In addition, for smaller advisers and for large private equity advisers, we are extending the deadlines from 90 days to 120 days. We believe data quality will improve and reporting burden will decrease with these changes, but FSOC will still obtain sufficiently timely data. The deadline for private equity fund advisers is designed to allow these advisers to obtain financial statements from their funds’ portfolio companies. In addition, unlike the proposal, large private equity fund managers will only file Form PF once a year, as opposed to the quarterly requirement for large hedge fund and liquidity fund managers. In consultation with FSOC staff, we are adopting this reduced filing frequency for private equity managers because the private equity business model is based on purchasing a select group of companies and working with management to strengthen them over time. Thus, trends emerge more slowly in private equity investing. In addition, we took heed of comments related to the costs that attach to reclassifying, recalculating or reprogramming data and systems for reporting purposes. In fine-tuning Form PF, we have balanced the usefulness that comes from standardization of data reporting, where necessary, with the benefit of relying on advisers’ own internal calculation methodologies where appropriate. Confidentiality I also know that the confidentiality of the information reported on Form PF is very important to those filing the information. The data is sensitive and proprietary and — by Congressional design — non-public. The Dodd-Frank Act contains strong protection for the information filed on Form PF. In addition, we are committed to building the controls necessary to provide appropriate confidentiality and limit the availability of proprietary hedge fund and other private fund information to those who have a regulatory need to know.”

SEC SETTLES WITH FORER CEO OF VERITAS SOFTWARE CORP.

The following excerpt is from the SEC website: “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that, on October 21, 2011, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California entered a settled final judgment against Mark Leslie, the former Chief Executive Officer of Veritas Software Corporation, in SEC v. Mark Leslie, Kenneth E. Lonchar, Paul A. Sallaberry, Michael M. Cully, and Douglas S. Newton, Civil Action No. 07 CV 3444 (JF) (PSG) (N.D. Cal. filed July 2, 2007). The final judgment resolves the Commission's case against Leslie. The Commission's amended complaint alleges that Leslie and the remaining defendants in this action inflated Veritas' reported revenues by approximately $20 million in connection with a software sale to AOL. The complaint further alleges that Leslie failed to disclose material information to Veritas' independent auditors in violation of the federal securities laws. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint, Leslie consented to entry of a final judgment permanently enjoining him from future violations of Rule 13b2-2(a)(2)of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and ordering him to pay disgorgement and prejudgment interest of $1,550,000 and a civil penalty of $25,000. Kenneth E. Lonchar and Paul A. Sallaberry remain as defendants in the Commission's action.”

SEC REQUIRES COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DOCUMENTS FROM FINRA

The following excerpt is from the SEC website: “Washington, D.C., Oct. 27, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today ordered the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to hire an independent consultant and undertake other remedial measures to improve its policies, procedures, and training for producing documents during SEC inspections. According to the SEC’s order instituting settled administrative proceedings, certain documents requested by the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office during an inspection were altered just hours before FINRA’s Kansas City District Office provided them. “The law requires FINRA to produce the documents the SEC seeks in its examinations in complete and accurate form,” said Gerald Hodgkins, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Although FINRA has previously taken steps to improve compliance, those enhancements did not go far enough to prevent the document production failure that occurred in its Kansas City District Office. This order will help ensure that FINRA effectively addresses the weaknesses in its training as well as its policies and procedures.” The SEC’s order finds that on Aug. 7, 2008, the Director of FINRA’s Kansas City District Office caused the alteration of three records of staff meeting minutes just hours before producing them to the SEC inspection staff, making the documents inaccurate and incomplete. According to the SEC’s order, the production of the altered documents by the Kansas City District Office was the third instance during an eight-year period in which an employee of FINRA or its predecessor (National Association of Securities Dealers) provided altered or misleading documents to the SEC. FINRA has consented to engage an independent consultant within 30 days that will: Conduct a one-time comprehensive review of FINRA’s policies and procedures and training relating to document integrity. Assess whether the policies and procedures and training are reasonably designed and implemented to ensure the integrity of documents provided to the SEC. Make recommendations for the enhancement of FINRA’s policies and procedures and training as may be necessary in light of the consultant’s review and assessment. Without admitting or denying the findings, FINRA consented to the SEC’s order requiring it to cease and desist from committing or causing future violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Exchange Act Rule 17a-1, and to comply with the undertakings described above. In determining to accept FINRA’s settlement offer, the Commission considered remedial acts promptly undertaken by FINRA and cooperation afforded the SEC staff.”

SEC CHAIRMAN SCHAPIRO DISCUSSES FRAUD

The following excerpt is from the SEC website: by Chairman Mary L. Schapiro U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Washington, D.C. November 3, 2011 Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss fraud and how we might be better able to prevent it. I’d like to thank the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Foundation for sponsoring an especially timely conference. Today, we live in a world in which fewer individuals retire with defined-benefit pension plans; more people are paying more money out-of-pocket for higher education; and once solid savings strategies — like home ownership — seem unsure. People simply don’t have the safety net they had — or felt they had — just a few years ago. At times like these, fighting financial fraud is an especially urgent task. It’s not just the timing of this conference that makes it important, though. It’s the recognition by the sponsors and participants that there is no single strategy or entity that can eliminate fraud by itself. We need to mount a comprehensive, multi-lateral approach to fraud prevention, one that brings together government agencies, private and non-profit institutions and investors themselves. Of course, the SEC needs to play a central role in this effort. Protecting investors is our most important mission. It is why we exist. Our divisions and offices have unique power to regulate, oversee, examine and prosecute those in a position to commit fraud or engage in unscrupulous activities. But we have long relied on self-regulatory organizations (SROs) like FINRA to support us in this mission, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with the Center on Longevity and other partners to pursue this fight against fraud. This collaborative approach is something we are emphasizing inside and outside the agency. Inside the SEC, key offices and divisions are working together in all areas of our anti-fraud effort. And outside the agency, the SEC is collaborating more often, and with better results, with everyone from state securities regulators to criminal prosecutors to local nonprofits focused on fighting fraud. Rather than confronting fraudsters with a series of separate efforts, we are weaving our initiatives into an increasingly fine-meshed net, one that we hope is ever-harder to escape or avoid. The investor protection net we’re weaving has been reinforced with new leadership, more effective organizational structures, enhanced technology and a staff that is bringing greater industry experience, improved training and a renewed energy to the task of preventing fraud. Division of Enforcement The cornerstone of our anti-fraud effort remains the Division of Enforcement. Charged with detecting, deterring and prosecuting fraud, the Division is benefitting from an aggressive new management team, a more efficient structure, and upgraded technological support. One key step was restructuring the Division, redeploying veteran attorneys from management to investigative and prosecutorial positions, putting more troops on the front lines. Another was creating specialized units to concentrate on high-priority areas of enforcement. One such unit, the Office of Market Intelligence, serves as a central office for handling tips, complaints and referrals about wrongdoing, and houses the Whistleblower Office created by the Dodd-Frank Act. This office allows enforcement attorneys to provide a unified, coherent, coordinated response to the huge volume of potential leads the agency receives. In addition, when the SEC adopted rules creating the Whistleblower Program, we were finally able to offer substantial cash rewards to insiders and others with useful information about violations of the securities laws and abuse of the public trust. The result of all this is that the quality of the tips we receive has improved substantially and generated a number of cases now in the pipeline. Our handling of those tips has improved, as well, as the creation of the TCR system has allowed us to consolidate multiple, dispersed repositories for tips and complaints into a single, searchable database. In addition to capturing and storing information and making it broadly available to investigative staff, the system will eventually include risk analytics tools that will help the SEC quickly and efficiently identify the highest value tips and search for trends and patterns. Relying in part on information gathered through the TCR system, Enforcement is working to focus its limited resources on Division priorities by developing risk-based initiatives that anticipate and detect suspicious behavior, allowing Enforcement to move more rapidly in investigating and stopping fraud. One area of particular interest to Enforcement is affinity fraud — the targeting of specific groups tied together by shared characteristics, such as ethnicity, religious affiliation or profession. In these cases, fraudsters often rely on group members to provide recommendations and word-of-mouth advertising that brings in new victims. In one recent case, we obtained a court order freezing the assets of a company that targeted Deaf investors in the U.S. The company solicited several million dollars and promised extraordinary returns of 1.2 percent per day. In reality, those funds went into foreign banks and the 14,000 investors — half of them in the U.S. — never saw a penny returned. Of course, affinity fraud isn’t our only focus. Last winter, Attorney General Holder announced a dramatic example of a coordinated effort against schemes ranging from affinity fraud to Ponzi schemes to foreign exchange (FOREX) and business opportunity frauds. “Operation Broken Trust” was the first national operation of its kind to target such a broad array of investment frauds, all of which preyed directly on retail investors. Actions were brought against 189 civil defendants and 310 criminal defendants for fraud schemes that harmed more than 120,000 victims and involved more than $10 billion. These SEC collaborations with the Justice Department reflect an important symbiotic relationship. The SEC can only win civil judgments: monetary damages and industry bars. But we often provide the specialized investigative expertise that allows Justice to build a criminal case. In return, Justice wins criminal convictions that result in hard time for guilty parties — a particularly powerful deterrent. The Microcap Fraud Working Group is another collaboration, this one inside the agency. This team brings together the Division of Enforcement and the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination (OCIE) in a coordinated, proactive approach to detecting and deterring fraud involving microcap securities. This type of fraud is often perpetuated through “pump and dump” schemes in which the securities are promoted or “pumped” through the release of false and misleading information while insiders profit by selling or “dumping” the promoted stock to the public. Many of the promoters and boiler room operations involved in pump and dumps are unregistered, making them harder to discover and shut down. Nonetheless, the SEC has closed down several of these operations this year alone. Last January, for example, we brought a case against a New York fraudster who was pushing millions of shares of penny stocks on his website and posting price predictions with no basis in reality. When these promotional efforts brought dramatic, but temporary, increases in volume and price, the perpetrator sold shares from his personal account, earning almost $3 million in profits. In addition to bringing cases against individuals who perpetrate microcap fraud, we also target the issuers themselves. In June, we suspended trading in 17 microcap stocks whose issuers were suspected of pumping stock prices by providing inadequate and inaccurate information to investors. Microcap stocks are often where fraud meets social media, with posts on message boards by stock-touting websites, twitter users, and anonymous individuals taking the place of the classic boiler room phone banks. In these cases, online hype often led to price spikes that didn’t last much beyond the time needed for their promoters to dump shares and pocket investors’ money. The challenges of policing these evolving markets are enormous but new strategies, technologies and organization are coming together to foster more and more effective enforcement. OCIE OCIE is another stalwart in the SEC’s battle against fraud and a source of referrals to enforcement for prosecution. Like Enforcement, OCIE has also undergone substantial changes over the last two years, with an energetic new leadership team working with agency veterans to create the National Exam Program (NEP). Working with the SEC’s Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation, the NEP is creating and continuously improving metrics that allow OCIE to target registrants that pose higher risk. A recently-established Office of Risk Analysis and Surveillance unit within OCIE guides that targeting strategy across different program areas and sharpens focus on registrants and practices that pose the greatest risk to investors and market integrity. Working with filings and public information, OCIE targets registrants that show unusual patterns of activity — claiming returns that are consistently high, for example, even when the markets are down or are mixed. Other discrepancies that can serve as red flags include overstatement of assets, non-disclosure of affiliates or misrepresenting custodial arrangements. Even something as simple as a tip that an individual is lying about their college degree, or that a broker claiming a PhD in finance cannot answer basic technical questions, can trigger additional scrutiny — particularly if a registrant emphasizes those credentials in promotional material. This ability to target more effectively has become even more important in the wake of Dodd-Frank as OCIE’s responsibilities increase rapidly — including expanded responsibility for hedge fund and rating agency examinations — but the SEC’s budget grows much more slowly. This creates a number of risks, not the least of which is that investors will have the impression that because an entity or activity is subject to registration and regulation, that means that it is being adequately examined. Once an exam is triggered, a lot depends on the skills of the examiners themselves — the ability to grasp complex and misleading accounting, the tenacity to deal with extraordinary amounts of data, and the skill to conduct an effective interview. As a result, we are focused not just on technology and targeting, but on our staff and the way they conduct examinations. OCIE is continuing its restructuring efforts, including the development of specialized working groups in six key areas: Equity Market Structure and Trading Practices, Fixed Income and Municipals, Marketing and Sales Practices, Microcap Fraud, New and Structured Products, and Valuation. These working groups will serve as forums in which the NEP and other agency staff collaborate on issues, initiatives, and concerns. They will serve as ongoing resource for training and for disseminating this specialized knowledge. Stronger teamwork and collaboration between OCIE and the Division of Enforcement both led to an increase in referrals by OCIE to Enforcement and allowed the SEC to move more swiftly to protect investor assets when irregularities were discovered. One major case this year involved a Connecticut hedge fund advisor and related entities that were engaged in a multi-year, $200 million Ponzi scheme. The fraud was first discovered by OCIE examiners during a risk-based exam of a registered adviser affiliated with the fraudster. Despite conduct that ultimately led to a criminal obstruction of justice charge, OCIE and their colleagues in Enforcement obtained evidence of the fraud - evidence that also led to criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney. Much of OCIE’s work serves investors by improving and probing the quality of registrant’s disclosures — determining if investors’ funds are being handled safely and reported accurately, and discouraging any temptation to do otherwise. Office of Investor Education and Advocacy Another of our most important collaborations is with individual investors. As you know well, an informed and skeptical investor is the best defense against securities fraud. Unfortunately, many investors are just sophisticated enough to be excellent victims — more educated, affluent and financially literate than is generally thought. So, at the SEC, we’re working to elevate investor education to the next level — where people recognize not just opportunities, but warning signs, a level where investors act not just on instinct, but on the basis of solid information. The Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (OIEA) leads that effort: answering investor questions, making information available through a variety of media, and bringing new light to issues surrounding investor protection. Every day, we get questions about the securities markets and complaints, about brokers, investment advisers, and particular investments. Often these disputes can be settled quickly, after OIEA forwards the complaint to the entity involved. In more serious cases, OIEA staff enters the complaint into the SEC’s TCR database for review by either the Division of Enforcement or OCIE. Our goal, however, is to reach out to investors before they need to reach out to us, ensuring that they have the information and background they need before making potentially risky investment decisions. There are a number of ways we try to do that. In 2009, we launched Investor.gov, a website focused exclusively on investor education for individuals. It offers investors information topics such as how to research investments and investment professionals, understand fees, and detect fraud. For investors who prefer print, we continue to offer this information in hard copy, as well. And, of course, all of our materials are available free of charge and without copyright, encouraging the widest possible dissemination. We also reach out to investors directly, electronically and through partnerships with other organizations. In the past year, we have published Investor Alerts and Bulletins on subjects including fake securities-related websites, pre-IPO investment fraud, stock trading basics, margin rules, and potential issues with reverse merger transactions. In addition to using Investor.gov and the SEC’s website to disseminate materials, we also use other channels, including a designated RSS feed, GovDelivery, press releases, and our Twitter account — @SEC_Investor_Ed — which has over 22,000 followers. And we are also reaching out through partnership with other government agencies, local governments and private sector financial education organizations. We work, for example, with the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and its Investor Protection Campaign for Older Investors, which is conducted in conjunction with state securities regulators and AARP. Some of OIEA’s most important, recent contributions to investor protection are the studies it is conducting. One study, required by the Dodd Frank Act, looked at how investors get information about investment professionals and suggested ways to help them access and use it more effectively. It proposed, for example, combining FINRA’s BrokerCheck and the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) databases and adding a ZIP Code search function, so investors can more easily obtain results about both advisers and broker-dealers no matter which database they search. And it suggested that educational content be added to both systems, so investors can better understand the information they find and make clearer red flags that might sometimes signal a potential fraud. Another study, also required by Dodd-Frank, involves a broad survey of retail investors’ financial literacy. Issues include: Evaluating the existing level of financial literacy among retail investors. How to improve the timing, content, and format of disclosures regarding financial intermediaries, investment products, and investment services. How to make it easier for investors to understand expenses and conflicts of interest in transactions involving investment services and products. What the most effective existing private and public efforts to educate investors are. A key component of this study is investor testing currently underway that is aimed at determining the effectiveness of current SEC-mandated disclosure documents. The results of this testing will be used to determine how disclosure materials could more effectively communicate the information that SEC registrants are required to provide. For many people, investment information that you and I would consider important and easily available, is difficult to access and hard to understand. And their failure to access it leaves them vulnerable. These studies will help the SEC put clear, necessary information in front of investors and help keep them keep their nest egg safe. Today, 100 million Americans are invested in the financial markets. The trillions of dollars they entrust to others make a tempting target. Fortunately, many frauds are slow-motion crimes, and alert investors can detect them before they take place. Unfortunately, too few investors know what to look for, or how easy it is to get answers from the SEC, FINRA, and many other organizations able to steer people away from risky or fraudulent investments. Our Office of Investor Education and Advocacy is working to change that. And they’re looking forward to changing that in partnership with you. Collaboration There are so many more other collaborative efforts underway than I have time to note. For example: We’ve leveraged the capacity of the private sector by adopting regulations requiring that broker-dealers and investment advisers which have custody of their clients funds be subject to a surprise audit every year to help ensure that customer funds are protected. We’re working more closely than ever with state regulatory agencies, leveraging the differing strengths and jurisdictions that federal and state agencies bring to the table, to build the strongest possible case when fraud is suspected. This year, a number of Chinese companies suspected of providing false or misleading financial statements to investors were delisted from U.S. exchanges. The SEC is working with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and the Chinese government to increase cooperation on audit oversight of public companies and ensure accurate financial reporting. And Risk Fin, the SEC’s “in-house think tank,” is playing a key role in developing our risk-based targeting strategy. The fact is no single agency can take all the actions needed to contain and reduce the kind of fraud that threatens life savings, turn “golden years” into dust, and steal dreams invested in over a lifetime. But no agency or institution is better placed, better prepared or more motivated to stand at the center of this fight, bringing our expertise to bear wherever possible, and taking advantage of the expertise of others whenever we can. Today, there’s a new energy and a smarter approach to the SEC’s efforts: more experience and better training in the staff, more effective organization and improved collaboration; and upgraded IT to support it all. Perhaps most important of all, though, is our understanding that in an age of limited resources, the SEC has to work collaboratively with other organizations, agencies, academics, and activists to protect investors. The fight against fraud will take a serious effort from us all."