Protect Your Portfolio from SCAM Wealth Advisors

Chris calls out the rise of misleading marketing tactics in the financial industry, from fake TV appearances to fraudulent credentials. Highlighting examples of "trustwashing," he urges consumers to do their homework before trusting advisors who may use unethical tactics to appear credible. Learn how to protect yourself and avoid falling for these scams. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact that we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, kids, beware of false advertising. You know, I'm
usually pretty abreast of all the comings and goings when
it comes to the financial world and cons and frauds
and ripoffs. We'd written quite a few pieces back in
the day with the various different insurance sales people with

(00:38):
these ridiculous designations that they would have you get out
of a crackerjack box and they'd send out these mass
mass mailings to people and have a free luncher dinner.
Scaminar I used to call them basically putting people into
equity index tenuities and garbage financial products. But I guess

(00:59):
there's a couple loopholes here that advisors and I use
that term loosely, are using to bolster bolster there. I
guess they're they're their trustworthiness right right, many people that

(01:21):
they obviously they're looking into utilizing the financial advisers obviously
looking at track record, you're looking at who people have
dealt with in the past. It's again, it's a it's
an honesty and competence marketplace that people have to they
have to navigate through. And I get it. A lot

(01:46):
of the marketing, a lot of the marketing that we're
seeing right now being used people in my industry is
misleading at best. At best, TV appearances that they didn't make,

(02:06):
they never happened, articles, they didn't write, books that they
claim to have written that they had no part of
what soever. Again, you got standards and ethics, and they're
not meshing that well. Jason's Wide Wall Street Journal, he

(02:28):
called it trust washing. Yeah, I could come up with
something else. Quite frankly, this tarnishes the many advisors who
deserve the public's trust and the millions of people who
could benefit from professional financial advice. They can't tell for
sure who is trustworthy. You can, you can. You just

(02:49):
have to put a little bit of work in. You
just have to put a little bit of work. You
got lots of And I just looked at a dozens
of websites out there featuring words as as seen on
and logos from ABC and CBS and Fox and CNBC

(03:10):
and a myriad of other things that we're dealing with
all the time, and quite frankly, they didn't really appears.
Why calls these various different things on the sites. He
calls them trust badges. Online marketers charge a couple hundred

(03:30):
dollars for them. Again, I couldn't even believe this, quite frankly,
and I looked into it. It's true. These agencies they
write a press release with material that is provided by
the advisor, So in essence, the advisor writes a puff
piece about himself the agencies. Then all you need to

(03:53):
do is you need to put it out. You need
to syndicate the press release for posting on a website,
local TV station, whatever it may be, and it gets
put on there but buried somewhere not let everybody's actually
ever even seen it. So were those advisors were they

(04:13):
actually did they actually get invited to go on any
of these networks? Not so much, not so much. But
legally the advisor got to say, Hey, I was on
Fox and I was on this and I was on that. Yeah. Again.

(04:34):
This one of these companies, it's called Newswire NXT dot com.
The CEO of the company says that consumers clearly understand
that as senon does not necessarily imply that the person
or business was featured in an on air interview with
the TV network. Right. Sure. Anyway, there's another organization here,

(04:57):
you get a kick out of this one. The National
Ethics Association says it vets members carefully and is devoted
to aiding consumers with the increasingly complex tests of conducting
due diligence on business professionals. Yeah, Zwig looked into this,
and I did as well. The advisors that are listed

(05:20):
there on the National Ethics Association's roster, Yeah, not so
ethical here. Among the advisors with the NA seal of approval,
seven were fired amid allegations of misconduct. Seven were sanctioned
by regulators for selling unregistered securities, Three who have been

(05:43):
barred for life from the securities industry, two whose state
securities licenses have been revoked. Two filed for personal bankruptcy,
one with nearly two hundred thousand dollars in unpaid federal taxes. No, no, no,
it's not this great honor to be featured in the
n EA. As they're telling people, again, this is I

(06:04):
go on and on with all of these things, and
this is nothing new. Again, do your homework. People, do
your homework when it comes to hiring someone. Take a
look into their background that there's many different places you
can go to. If they say that they were on

(06:25):
a program, or they're getting invited on a probe, whatever
it may be, there probably is going to be some
sort of YouTube evidence for that. Just again, be careful.
I'm going to sound like, what was it the beginning
of Hill Street Blues there? Remember that, Just be careful
out there. There's a lot of crooks and a lot

(06:46):
of connors. Let's just leave it at that. Watchdog on
Wall Street dot Com