An Army financial counselor will spend years in prison after his conviction on defrauding Gold Star Families. If nothing else, the story should alert members of the military and their families to use care in picking a financial adviser in the first place. The Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with someone who has witnessed this sort of bad advice, and he has some tips for avoiding it: Thiago Glieger of RMG Advisors.
Tom Temin There’s some really bad advice that happens out there, isn’t there?
Thiago Glieger Yeah, there’s a lot of really bad actors that are very interested in enriching themselves at the cost of other people. Which is a really unfortunate part of the industry. And it can be seen in a lot of industries, but particularly in the field of finance, given its complexities. And so oftentimes, people are not exactly certain about what’s happening with their accounts, such as was the case in this scenario where people were not really sure about what was happening, what was occurring, what kind of fees were being charged on the account. And ultimately, they paid the price.
Tom Temin Yes. Well, in that case, they were actually defrauded out of some of their principal as opposed to just paying fees for bad advice. So at some point you can get that advice, but it’s not necessarily criminal and theft. In this case it devolved over to fraud. Are there signs that people can watch for possible fraudulent activity?
Thiago Glieger Yeah, I think the big thing that you want to stay on top of is making sure that you’re looking at account statements. I’m a big proponent of not following every single day, because if you’re watching the markets, that could make you very nervous, but you don’t want to neglect looking at what’s happening in the account. There should be the place or the custodian that the money is there is going to be reporting dollars that are coming in, dollars that are coming out. In this case, I understand there were…
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