Today's cases involve:  Citigroup (Defendant);  Bank of America (Plaintiff);  Wells Fargo (D);  Charles Schwab (D);  Ameriprise (D). 

     1.  Citigroup (defendant).   A former banker for Citigroup says she was canned because of her age after she went on maternity leave.  Ms. Lilienthal, 51, a business banker, said her supervisor warned co-workers that he was hired to "get rid of dead wood," according to the filing.  Just hours before she left to go on maternity leave in 2007, she was given a "final warning" for her lagging sales.  In her filing, Ms. Lilienthal said it was the first she heard of the problem.  Citi spokesperson said the case is "without merit."   [NYPost, 9/3]

   2.  Bank of America (plaintiff).   Bank of America Corp. has accused a former computer programmer of stealing trade secrets from databases before he left the bank in September.  The bank said that Rao Chalasani - who had worked for the bank's global markets portfolio management group in New York until 9/22/10, the day after the bank announced it was laying off 400 employees - sent an email on 9/20 from his company email address to a personal email address containing 21 files.   The bank contends, "The files attached to defendant's email all contain confidential and proprietary, nonpublic information concerning [BofA], including profit and loss figures for different lines of its businesses throughout the world."  The information reportedly also included the bank's "current trading positions in numerous securities and the company's assessment of risk."  The email transfer was discovered 9/30 in a regular review of emails containing unusually large attachments that company employees send to address outside the company. [Reuters, 10/7]

    3.  Wells Fargo (defendant).  Baltimore is again trying to sue Wells Fargo, accusing the bank of increasing foreclosures by racist, predatory lending.  After a federal judge dismissed 2 previous complaints, the city filed a 3rd on in U.S. District Court - this time with 14 new paragraphs meant to address the issue a judge had raised in his dismissals: a lack of evidence that the lender was responsible for housing vacancies and millions of dollars in associated damages.  Wells Fargo has repeatedly denied the charges and said it would "vigorously fight" the lawsuit.  [UPI, 10/23]

    4.  Charles Schwab (defendant).  Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP filed a class-action lawsuit against Charles Schwab & Co. on behalf of investors who owned shares in the Schwab Total Bond Market Fund (SWBLX) as of 11/30/06.  The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, accuses SF-based Schwab of causing the fund to deviate from its fundamental business objective to track the Lehman Brothers U.S. Aggregate Bond Index - instead the fund allegedly invested a material percentage of its portfolio in high-risk, non-agency CMOs, which were not part of that Lehman Index.  The lawsuit contends the deviation led to tens of millions in shareholder losses due to a long-term decline in the value of non-agency MBS's.  Plaintiffs asked the courts to award restitution to all class members, to order Charles Schwab to return any management or other fees collected after the fund's alleged deviation from its fundamental business objectives, and to order Charles Schwab to cover the class's legal costs.   [Press Release, 9/3]

    5.  Ameriprise Financial (defendant).  A former branch manager for Ameriprise Financial has sued the company, alleging that he was fired November 2009 for raising serious allegations about the firm's oversight of brokers.  Michael Loscalso, who who's been with the firm all his career, since 1989, alleged that his repeated complaints to management “about fraud, forgery and other practices which violated SEC rules and regulations led to the retaliatory termination of his employment” by Ameriprise. The “whistleblower” suit was filed 10/8, in federal court in the eastern district of Pennsylvania.   The Plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages, though he had earned $260,000 a year and supervised more than 50 RR's and 60 licensed and unlicensed staff members, according to the suit.

Mr. Loscalso repeatedly reported violations of SEC regulations to superiors - forgery, fraud, unlicensed sales, unlicensed signing of documents, overcharging for financial planning services, under delivery of financial planning advice, and breaches of client privacy and data security - e.g., an RR's assistant signed 30 annuity applications on the broker's behalf, prompting Ameriprise to issue an LOC to the RR, but take no further action.  Between the end of September and October last year, Mr. Loscalso told “several members of management that he was considering alerting outside regulatory agencies, including FINRA and the SEC.  On 11/5/09, Ameriprise fired him - for failure to supervise his advisers.    [Investment News, 10/17]