Word: junks
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...largest claims ever against a mutual fund operator, officials in New York and Massachusetts filed fraud charges against First Investors (assets: $3.5 billion) and a total of seven of its top executives. At least five other states may follow suit. "These were the junkiest of the junk bonds, yet investors who asked specific questions about them were lied to," says New York Attorney General Robert Abrams. "We've handled many fraud cases before, but nothing approaches the scale of what we see here. This is heartrending...
First Investors was one of the first mutuals to buy junk in quantity from Milken. The high-flying paper helped two of the firm's 25 funds (the Fund for Income and the High Yield Fund) grow to more than $2.4 billion in assets. At its peak, First Investors commanded an army of 5,000 sales agents spread throughout 285 offices in 49 states -- most of them inexperienced, ill trained and often crammed like cattle into boiler-room offices. The agents memorized scripted pitches that they parroted to customers, usually over the phone. The firm also uses a pyramid-style...
Within a year of his hiring in 1986, Loncar had dumped enough high-risk junk, most of it on unsophisticated buyers and senior citizens with fixed incomes, to become one of First Investors' "Top 100" salesmen. "When clients asked if these investments were safe, we were taught to mislead them," says Loncar. "I didn't even know these were junk bonds. I learned more about those funds after I left the company three years later...
...industry's worst performers. Benalder Bayse Jr., who from 1985 to 1989 ran both funds, testified with immunity at Milken's presentencing hearing that a Milken crony, Roy Johnson, helped him land what he described as a "lucrative job" at First Investors. Thereafter, according to Bayse, Johnson funneled junk bonds to him, both for the mutual funds and, in some cases, for Bayse's personal account...
Consumers worried about recession and war are shopping for bargains this year. Junk-bond king Michael Milken pulls a stiff ten-year prison term...