Brokers

A federal grand jury has indicted former investment broker S. Jay Goldinger on four counts of wire fraud in connection with an alleged scheme to use clients' funds to cover his trading losses in 1994 and 1995, U.S. officials said Monday.

Former investment broker S. Jay Goldinger pleaded guilty Monday to four counts of wire fraud for scheming to shift his clients' funds to cover trading losses. Goldinger, who made trades from now-defunct Capital Insight, told U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles that he illegally reallocated funds in his clients' accounts because many of them were seeking to show gains or losses to obtain a "tax advantage."

The state Department of Motor Vehicles decided Friday to postpone until next year enforcement of a 1971 law that discount automobile brokers say would drive them out of business. The announcement came one day after spokesmen for the brokers protested plans by the department to adopt on Nov. 26 a new regulation that would add enforcement teeth to the law and, in effect, close the brokers' doors. The department had said that it would begin implementing the statute Jan. 1.

Independent automobile brokers, who insist they can sell vehicles cheaper than new-car dealers, won an important legislative victory Monday in what they call their fight for survival. With no votes to spare, the Senate passed on a 21-5 roll call--the exact majority required--an embattled bill sponsored by auto brokers that would enable them to continue to advertise vehicles, but not describe them as new.

The National Assn. of Securities Dealers will put brokers' employment histories online starting March 26, as the first step of a $50-million project to make it easier for investors to check on the backgrounds and disciplinary histories of U.S. brokers. Initially, the expanded NASD public disclosure system will offer access through the Internet to basic information such as a broker's work and registration history, said NASD Regulation spokeswoman Nancy Condon.

When Eric Fuller was a student at UC Berkeley in 1982, he helped make ends meet by buying and selling airline frequent-flier mileage awards. The business became so good, in fact, that after he finished law school in San Diego and passed the California bar exam, he went into it full time. At the peak of his success in 1986, his La Jolla-based Coupon Bank employed 100 people and grossed $2 million a month. But all that has changed.

A unit of Wall Street powerhouse Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle a case in which one of its former brokers -- a former hip-hop industry insider -- was accused of defrauding customers of $740,000, New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer said Tuesday. Spitzer required the payment of penalties and restitution from the company for failing to properly supervise the broker, Gabriele Tamar Smith, even after the company was put on notice. Fifteen clients were affected.

The Internet is a good thing, right? For individual investors, maybe. For mutual fund companies, maybe not. One could argue that in many ways, the Web has had a net negative effect on the fund industry thus far. Think about it. The Internet fosters a do-it-yourself attitude. Sure, that might be good for so-called direct-marketed fund companies. These are no-load fund outfits such as T. Rowe Price and Janus that sell directly to consumers without the help of brokers.

The FBI said Tuesday that it was investigating the whereabouts of a veteran Dean Witter Reynolds stockbroker who allegedly disappeared with as much as $8 million while on a golf trip earlier this month. Walter F. Curran, 45, of Wellesley, Mass., is said to have left on the trip more than a week ago and has not been heard from. Fellow brokers have described Curran as one of the top money makers in the Boston office, which he joined in 1981.

It was eerily quiet Monday in the Pit, the warren of cubbyholes at the center of Merrill Lynch's gold-toned office suite in downtown Los Angeles, where the youngest stockbrokers sit shoulder to shoulder, working the phones and staring at quotes on flashing computer screens. The Dow had collapsed. Untold billions of the world's wealth had vanished.