The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has fined Prudential Annuities Distributors, Inc. $950,000 for failing to detect and prevent a scheme that resulted in the theft of approximately $1.3 million from an 89-year-old customer’s variable annuity account. The firm repeatedly failed to adequately investigate “red flags” that Travis A. Wetzel, a former registered sales assistant at LPL Financial and since-convicted felon, was transferring money from the customer’s Prudential variable annuity account to a third-party bank account in his wife’s maiden name. FINRA previously barred Wetzel in May 2013. Prudential Annuities and LPL reimbursed the customer in 2013.
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