Utah Broker’s Financial Crime Reports Ignored Red Flags

Utah-based clearing broker Alpine Securities Corp. repeatedly failed to file proper suspicious activity reports, a federal judge said Dec. 11.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Alpine over deficient and missing SARs that should have been filed between 2011 and 2015, according to Judge Denise Cote’s order. She gave the SEC summary judgment on those counts that Alpine didn’t contest.

About 50 percent of Alpine’s 2013 – 2014 SARs didn’t completely and accurately disclose key information the company had knowledge of, according to a 2015 SEC report discussed in the order. The agency eventually identified 1,593 deficient SARs, Cote ...