LOS ANGELES, June 26, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lawyers with the Securities Law Firm of SHEPHERD, SMITH, EDWARDS & KANTAS LLP, www.sseklaw.com, have recently filed a claim on behalf of clients of Cetera Investments Services, LLC (“Cetera”) and its financial advisor Howard Hsieh (“Hsieh”) alleging that their accounts were over-concentrated in alternative investment private placements, including Hospitality Investors Trust, Arc Realty Finance, and Northstar Healthcare.
A private placement is an unregistered security offered to a limited pool of investors. Investors have to be accredited, as it takes a special understanding of the risks associated with such securities to own them. Private placements and similar untraded investments are largely illiquid and can be extremely risky. These entities are usually start-ups with a limited track record, which is why they cannot enter the public market for securities. Furthermore, there are limited disclosures regarding the internal finances of private placement entities and no publicly available indication of the value. All values are based on an “independent” appraisal by a third party, if any, or based on the representations from the company itself since the investments do not trade anywhere. These investments also usually pay high commissions to the advisors selling them.
Often, when a firm or a financial advisor engage in wholly inappropriate trading with one of their clients, there are many other clients who were mistreated, misled, or otherwise hurt without even realizing it. If you are or were a client of Cetera and its advisor Howard Hsieh (or any other advisor working with Cetera) and believe you may have been inappropriately invested or otherwise lost money with them, contact the law firm of Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas LLP for a free, no obligation evaluation of your account to determine if you might have a claim to attempt to recover some or all of your losses. All communications will be kept strictly confidential, and you will not be billed in any way for a consultation.
Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas LLP has a team of attorneys, consultants and staff with more than 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law. For more than two decades, our firm has represented thousands of investors nationwide to recover losses.
Contact Info: 800-259-9010
Kirk Smith ksmith@sseklaw.com
Ryan Cook rcook@sseklaw.com