Bernard Madoff was a Yeshiva University trustee… He was treasurer … But that’s old news.
Jeffrey Cohen is an Indiana University trustee… Chair of the board’s Finance and Audit Committee… His securities fraud charge is new news.
The school hasn’t taken his name off of its website.
Neither has Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, where he’s on the Board of Advisors.
He’s got lots of university board positions, huh?
Universities love big money boys on their boards, and who can blame them?
But there’s a big risk factor.
The Indianapolis office of securities firm Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. is facing charges that it improperly advised more than 100 Indiana clients to invest $54.9 million in a complex securities auction that later collapsed.
As a result, the investments have been frozen, and it is unclear whether the investors will be able to recover any of their money, despite being told the investment carried little or no risk and could be redeemed within weeks.
The firm is charged with securities fraud, failing to supervise and train employees, and selling unsuitable products, according to an administrative complaint filed Thursday by the Indiana secretary of state’s office.
Of the 141 people who invested, 92 were clients of Jeffrey Cohen, managing director of the office. Cohen is also a member of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis board of advisers and a trustee for Park Tudor School.According to the complaint, Cohen said he did not receive any special training on the securities in question, had no knowledge of auction failures and did not disclose any risks because “most of the clients in the real world don’t want to hear, you know, every single risk factor.”
He could not be reached for comment at his office…
October 4th, 2009 at 7:36AM
Note that IUPUI is not Purdue, UD. The chancellor of IUPUI is also an executive Vice-President of IU. This is more of an IU scandal.
October 4th, 2009 at 7:52AM
Whoops. Thanks, tp. I’ll fix.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:50AM
Last year, I saw an organizational chart of IUPUI. The "Purdue" part of it was a disconnected two boxes floating to the upper right of the diagram.