The national plaintiff securities law firm of Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A. obtained an American Arbitration Association award of more than $250,000 on behalf of a Mexican investor who lost all of his money in the now-infamous Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The investor was placed in the Anchor Hedge Fund, a Madoff “feeder” fund, by the Florida investment advisory firm Sovereign International Asset Management, Inc. (“Sovereign”). Sovereign represented that Anchor was a diversified “fund of funds.” In truth, Anchor actually invested investors’ money only in the Madoff Ponzi scheme.
The AAA arbitrator found that Sovereign misrepresented the Anchor fund as a diversified fund when Anchor actually concentrated all investors’ money entirely in Madoff. The arbitrator also found that Sovereign was negligent, breached its fiduciary duties to the investor, and violated Florida securities laws by failing to understand the nature of the investments that the Anchor fund placed investors’ money into, i.e., Madoff.
