Securities Fraud Attorney Blog

Sean Coffey has recently embarked on a campaign to become the next Attorney General of New York State. I have never been substantially involved in a political campaign before, but Sean is different. I’ve worked with and known Sean and his prior law firm for many years and I have never been more impressed with a potential candidate for elected office as I am with Sean. He is smart, loyal, strong and possesses all of the qualities needed to be a fantastic Attorney General. Therefore, I’m going to be actively involved in helping Sean become the next Attorney General. And I think he’s going to win. The press is certainly catching on very quickly. Kate Kelley, a very well respected writer for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a great piece about the AG race. Here is the link. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704561004575013503448906246.html

And a snippet from the piece:

“So far, Wall Street isn't taking much heat from current or potential candidates to succeed Mr. Cuomo.

Mr. Coffey, a former Navy pilot who won $6 billion for investors in the failed telecommunications company WorldCom Inc., was described in a magazine article that followed his victory as "Wall Street's New Nemesis." He said in an interview that his reputation "is not going to be an albatross around my neck in this election."

Noting the securities industry's importance to the economy of New York, he said his aim as attorney general would be to root out corrupt individuals. "I think Wall Street works great when it plays by the rules," said Mr. Coffey, 53.”

Sean has been committed to a lifetime of public service. His resume is truly spectacular. Here are some highlights. He graduated from Annapolis with merit in 1978. On active duty during the Cold War, Sean flew as a P-3 Orion mission commander tracking Soviet nuclear submarines.
After completing his first squadron tour, Sean was selected for important shore assignments in Washington, D.C. as Junior Officer Intern to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the personal military assistant to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. While stationed in Washington, Sean attended Georgetown University Law Center at night, winning several academic awards, serving as the sole evening-division editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and graduating magna cum laude.

In 1987, after resigning from active Navy service, Sean returned to New York as a litigation associate with the law firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. Sean was appointed an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York in 1991. He worked with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies prosecuting a wide variety of cases involving firearms, narcotics, business crime, bank fraud, and other major crimes. Sean tried many cases to verdict.

In 1995, Sean joined the law firm of Latham & Watkins where, as counsel and later partner, he defended Fortune 500 companies in many complex civil, regulatory, and criminal matters. After several years as a corporate defense attorney, Sean decided to return to pursuing corporate misconduct and joined the litigation firm of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, which represents many of the world’s largest institutional investors, including New York State’s Common Retirement Fund and Teachers’ Retirement System and many Taft-Hartley union funds.

In his eleven years at Bernstein Litowitz, Sean led teams that recovered billions of dollars for victims of corporate fraud and malfeasance and won praise for achieving significant corporate governance improvements. Among Sean’s notable successes was his role in the WorldCom securities litigation, a case he took to trial in 2005 as lead attorney for thousands of investors, including the New York State Common Retirement Fund. Sean and his team recovered over $6 billion and -- in a historic first -- required all outside directors and key wrongdoers to contribute from their personal funds. Sean was selected as one of the National Law Journal’s “Winning Attorneys” of 2005, and profiled by Bloomberg Markets magazine (“Wall Street’s New Nemesis”), the American Lawyer (“Taking Citi to School” and “Breaking the Banks”), and The Wall Street Journal (“It’s Coffey Time”). Sean recently retired from Bernstein Litowitz to seek the Democratic nomination to become New York’s next Attorney General.

To me, the office of the Attorney General is one of the most important positions in our state’s government and, in more recent months, our country. As we face difficult times, I am confident Sean is the person who can best serve as the people’s lawyer and advocate. This is Sean’s first run for elected office and, with that, he brings a diverse and successful legal career as a prosecutor, defense attorney and plaintiff’s lawyer. He is an honest, loyal, professional man who will bring a great deal of integrity to the office.

FINRA announced yesterday that it won approval from the SEC to expand its BrokerCheck service to make records of final regulatory actions against brokers permanently available to the public, regardless of whether the broker continues to be employed in the securities industry.

The FINRA press release states disclosure records for former brokers will be available on BrokerCheck beginning November 30. It goes on to state, “This is an important step for investors and for investor protection," said FINRA Chairman and CEO Richard Ketchum. "Individuals previously barred by FINRA and other regulators have surfaced in a number of recent frauds in other parts of the financial industry that cost unsuspecting investors millions of dollars. It has never been more critical for investors to research the backgrounds of the financial professionals they deal with than it is today."

This is an important addition to the publicly available regulatory records of former brokers. Often times, permanently barred brokers, traders and salesmen will attempt to work at unregistered entities such as hedge funds. It is difficult for potential investors to do due diligence on a hedge fund manager without the historical BrokerCheck information. In the past, if a registered representative was out of the business for more than two years, a public investor had no access to the broker’s disciplinary record.

BrokerCheck is available at www.finra.org/brokercheck