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Schwab YieldPlus and other Money Market Misrepresentation and Fraud Claims
Following the recent credit "melt down", investors who had placed funds into what they thought were safe and secure money market funds, including Charles Schwab YieldPlus Fund Select Shares (SWYSX), Schwab YieldPlus Funds Investors Shares (SWYPX), Schwab California Tax Free YieldPlus Fund (SWYCX) and GM SmartNotes sustained significant losses. In fact, through mismanagement, failure to properly disclose and in violation of various state securities laws and industry regulations, the Schwab brokerage firm mislead and defrauded innocent investors by misleading investors about the underlying risks inherent in the extent to which these funds were exposed to the dangers and volatility of the sub-prime mortgage and credit markets. It also appears that Schwab did not diversify the funds' investments in a prudent manner consistent with representations Schwab made about the funds. In fact, Schwab misrepresented YieldPlus investors as to the over-concentration these YieldPlus funds had in securities connected to the mortgage industry, specifically the sub-prime mortgage business.
As defrauded investors in the Schwab YieldPlus funds painfully have learned, these purportedly safe and secure money market funds have lost as much as 30% of their value and have significantly "broken the buck". Shustak Frost & Partners, P.C. is accepting cases from investors who lost money from investments in any of these Schwab YieldPlus money market funds, or GM SmartNotes due to what we believe to be a pattern of fraud, misrepresentation and mismanagement. Schwab and GM heavily promoted these as safe and secure investments with which to preserve principal and generate current interest. Schwab, for example, misrepresented, however, that far from safe and secure investments, their YieldPlus funds' underlying investments were not properly diversified and obtained a more than marginally higher rate of return by investing in extremely risky investments, primarily inflated, illiquid investments in mortgage backed securities and sub-prime mortgages.
There are a number of class actions pending involving fraud and misrepresentation about the Schwab YieldPlus funds. As many investors know, however, class actions generally benefit the attorneys and not the actual class members. Our firm is reviewing and accepting only individual claims from investors who do not want to be part of a class action and who wish to pursue their own claims in an effort to obtain as much recovery as possible.
Our money market, YieldPlus fraud attorneys are ready to speak to you to evaluate your case. For those cases we decide are worth pursuing, we will handle them on a fixed fee against a contingency fee basis. If you invested in a Schwab YieldPlus money market, or other money market fund, including GM SmartNotes, and suffered substantial losses, call or email our managing partner, Erwin Shustak to discuss your situation. Erwin can be reached at 888.748.8748, ext. 109 or via email at Shustak@shufirm.com. We handle these claims as arbitration claims before FINRA (formerly the NASD) which provides an expedited, simplified process for pursuing your claims in an expedited manner which will allow you to resolve your claims more quickly, and obtain a greater portion of your losses than by being part of a class action.
For more information, contact Erwin Shustak, Esq. (Shustak@shufirm.com) or Thomas Frost (tfrost@shufirm.com) or call them at 888.748.8748.
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