Another financial crime seems to have JPMorgan's fingerprints on it
Jul 12, 2012
This week's suicide of the CEO of Peregrine Financial Group laid bare a $200 million missing-funds scandal that looks a lot like what happened October 31 with WF Global.
Now another irregularity has surfaced. It seems all the investors thought that JP Morgan was holding the funds, but instead they were being diverted to US Bank without the knowledge of the investors--or even Sakoor, the Florida managing director, if he can be believed.
The investigation into the collapse of Iowa brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group is notable for one name that has not yet turned up: JPMorgan Chase.
JPMorgan, the country's biggest bank, held customer accounts for Peregrine, doing business as PFGBest. But in alleging that Peregrine took customer money, the National Futures Association and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have claimed that customer money is missing not from a JPMorgan account, but from a U.S. Bank account....
Sackoor, the Florida managing director, says he had never heard of a U.S. Bank segregated-funds account before Peregrine collapsed.
So where is the money? Was it another perfect crime committed by banksters?
According to a CFTC report, Peregrine had about $400 million in total segregated customer funds as of the end of April -- about $180 million more than the $220 million the NFA says was supposed to be in the U.S. Bank account. Is that $180 million in a JPMorgan account? No one is saying yet.
Neither JPMorgan, U.S. Bank, the NFA, the CFTC nor PFG have yet returned calls seeking comment.
A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment on Tuesday and did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on Thursday.Update: He declined to comment again.
It's getting more and more suspicious.
And JPMorgan's involvement in the PFG case is also an echo of its involvement in the collapse of another brokerage firm, MF Global -- JPMorgan had some customer funds for that firm, too.