As an Enforcement Branch Chief at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Pat Huddleston saw thousands of investors lose their life savings to reckless stockbrokers and outright fraud. In a decade of representing investors in private practice since leaving the SEC, Pat has often had to tell prospective clients that there is little hope of recovering their money, either because the offending brokerage firm is defunct or because the “investment” was never anything more than a well-disguised scam. In most cases, a pre-investment review of the broker’s background or the offering materials for the proposed “investment” would have revealed the danger lurking on the other side of the transaction. An SEC Enforcement Branch Chief sees things that investors don’t. Boilerplate that is indecipherable to the investor may be a red flag to the Branch Chief. Most importantly, investors cannot assess what is not said, while the Branch Chief knows about omissions that scream “warning!”

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