Retired Broker Helps Recoup $3.4 Million for 300 Muni Investors

Thanks to the persistence of Larry Wasserman, a 78-year-old retired broker who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, about 300 investors who were overcharged for municipal bonds are getting $3.4 million back.

Wasserman, who retired in 2016 after almost five decades, discovered that a key data point known as a factor had been improperly calculated on a bond he had purchased. The figure is a rare feature in muni bonds, and the steps that he had to go through to figure out he had overpaid underscore how opaque the $4 trillion tax-free debt market can be for individual investors.

The former ...