Unlawful Securities Sale

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged four companies and five individuals for unlawfully selling securities of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC to retail investors. Woodbridge filed for bankruptcy in December 2017. The Woodbridge owners were previously charged with operating a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme.

The SEC named Barry Kornfeld, Ferne Kornfeld, Lynette Robbins, Andrew Costa, Albert Klager and their companies in its complaint. Allegedly, these individuals were among Woodbridge’s top revenue producers, selling more than $243 million of its unregistered securities to more than 1,600 retail investors.

The SEC complaint alleges that the defendants reaped millions of dollars in commissions on their sales of Woodbridge securities.

However, the complaint says none of them were registered as broker-dealers. Therefore, they were prohibited from selling securities. Additionally, Barry Kornfeld allegedly violated a prior SEC order which barred him from acting as a broker.