This is Scott Cacchione, formerly of Merriman Curhan Ford & Co., a San Francisco brokerage. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil injunction (aka “lowered the boom”) against Cacchione for his role in the fradulent schemes of one-time Nashville Predators minority owner William “Boots” Del Biaggio. The basic idea here is that Cacchione helped Del Biaggio defraud lenders so that Del Biaggio could borrow enough cash to bankroll his roughly 30% stake in the team.
According to the SEC complaint, Cacchione engaged in two distinct securities fraud schemes. First, the complaint alleges that Cacchione helped concoct a fraudulent financing scheme with Del Biaggio, a friend and customer who had previously loaned Cacchione over $2 million. The SEC alleges that, beginning in August 2007, Cacchione emailed account statements of several unknowing Merriman customers to Del Biaggio, who falsified the account statements to make it appear that he owned the assets in the accounts. Using the doctored statements, the SEC contends that Del Biaggio was able to obtain $45 million in personal loans from banks and private lenders (part of which he used to purchase an interest in a professional hockey team). According to the SEC, Cacchione furthered the deception by signing documents falsely confirming that Del Biaggio owned the assets in the innocent customers’ accounts.
So, a couple wannabe rich guys defrauded some other rich guys, in order to deceive some other rich guys? Who cares about that in these dire economic times, right?
Just get a load of some of the details in the SEC’s litigation release (my emphasis below)…
In the second scheme, according to the SEC’s complaint, Cacchione bought highly risky, thinly-traded stocks in several of his customers’ brokerage accounts without his customers’ permission, and then pocketed more than $30,000 in commissions from the trades. The SEC alleges that between 2006 and 2007, Cacchione made at least twenty unauthorized trades in the account of a local children’s charity and also traded without permission in the account of an elderly customer.
Nice… gambling with money dedicated to kids and the elderly, while pocketing the trading commissions yourself.
You, Mr. Cacchione, are a real scumbag.
Thanks to James for passing the SEC doc along.