Broker Misrepresentation & Omission

Common Lies Your Broker May Have Told You

This isn’t just “sales talk.” When these statements lead to financial losses, they become the basis of a legal claim. See if any of these sound familiar:

• “This is 100% safe. It’s guaranteed.”
  This is the most common and dangerous lie. Outside of FDIC-insured bank products, no investment is guaranteed. Stocks, bonds, funds, and especially private placements all carry risk. If your broker used the word “guaranteed” to describe a market-based product, they lied.
• “This is just like a CD, but with a better return.”
  Brokers use this false comparison to sell complex, high-risk products like [Non-Traded REITs] or [Indexed Annuities]. They want you to think it’s safe and liquid like a bank CD, while omitting the high fees, illiquidity, and potential for loss.
• “Don’t worry about the fees, they’re tiny.”
  Brokers will often downplay or “forget” to mention the massive, 7-10% upfront commissions and fees on products like REITs, annuities, and private placements. These fees make it almost impossible for you to turn a profit and are the real reason they are pushing the product.
• “You can get your money out any time.”
  This is a devastating lie. They tell you an investment is liquid, but when you need your money for a medical emergency, you discover it’s locked up for 7-10 years in an annuity surrender period or an illiquid private placement.

The Broker’s #1 Defense: “It Was in the Prospectus!”

When we file a claim, the broker and their firm will immediately hide behind a mountain of paperwork. Their defense is always the same:

“The risks were all disclosed in the 200-page prospectus the client signed. It’s not our fault they didn’t read it.”

This is the laziest defense in the book, and it is not the “get out of jail free” card they think it is.

Your broker is a licensed professional. You are not. Their job is to be the expert and to verbally disclose all material risks to you in a way you can understand. They cannot use a complex legal document to shield themselves from a direct lie they told you to your face.

Telling you an investment is “safe” and then handing you a prospectus that says it’s “risky” is, itself, a form of misrepresentation.

You may be worried that it’s just your word against theirs. It’s not. We build a case on hard evidence.

• We Subpoena Their Notes: We demand the broker’s internal notes, emails, and compliance records. Often, what they wrote down to their managers doesn’t match what they told you.
• We Analyze the Product: We show the arbitration panel that the investment could not have met your stated goals (like “safety” or “income”), proving the broker’s pitch was a lie from the start.
• We Find the Pattern: We investigate the broker’s history (their BrokerCheck report) and the firm’s sales practices to see if they sold this same unsuitable product to dozens of other clients.
• We Prepare Your Testimony: We prepare you to give clear, credible, and powerful testimony about what you were told, what you understood, and why you invested.