Citigroup has had a history of deceiving investors on a large scale. Several of the largest financial scandals in the past decade have involved Citigroup, the broker-dealer with more than 16,000 offices worldwide. Since supervisory failures and irresponsible trading on Citigroup’s behalf have routinely harmed American investors, it’s a great wonder why this firm was dubbed by Congress to be “too large to fail.”
Larry Hagman Hits Back at Citi
Which broker-dealer paid the largest regulatory award to an individual investor 2010? This dubious honor went to Citigroup, which was ordered to pay $12 million after defrauding one of its former clients.
Larry Hagman, the former star of the hit TV show “Dallas”, and his wife opened an account with investment advisor Lisa Ann Detanna in 2005. Though Detanna and the firm were given specific instructions to invest the Hagmans’ money conservatively, the broker began investing more than 75 percent of the portfolio in risky stocks.
Detanna also purchased an extremely pricey life insurance policy for the Hagmans, under Citigroup’s supervision, that served no real purpose. In addition to annual premium payments of $168,000, the policy ended up costing $437,000 once the market fell; since the Hagmans had plenty of money protecting them in retirement, all they needed was to invest safely.
This incident, which spawned thousands of “Who Shot J.R.” pun headlines, is just the latest in a string of major regulatory mishaps for Citigroup Inc.
