by Howard Haykin

William Garbarino agreed to be barred from the industry to settle FINRA charges that he falsely testified during an employment-related FINRA arbitration case.

FINRA FINDINGS.    Mr. Garbarino was a registered rep with 35 years’ experience with 4 firms (Prudential Securities, Morgan Stanley, Raymond James, Lincoln Financial) who held a Series 8 (General Securities Sales Supervisor) license.  The arbitration case in question, filed by Garbarino in August 2009 (and later amended in 2010), involved issues relating to the authenticity of customer 'change of broker' forms submitted by Garbarino’s office staff to several annuity companies.

In May 2013, during his testimony at the arbitration [Yes, the arbitration case was nearly 4 years old], Garbarino was shown a sampling of the annuity company ‘change of broker’ forms that his office had submitted. When asked whether certain customer signatures on the forms were photocopied and used to create new forms, Garbarino responded that the customers’ signatures were authentic and not photocopies of the originals.

Yet, according to FINRA, Garbarino knew that his son, who worked in his office, had obtained from certain customers executed but partially blank signature pages for such forms. The son then supposedly photocopied those pages and used the copies to create falsified new forms containing identical, non-authentic signatures. These falsified forms were then submitted to several annuity companies as originals. 

This case addressed in this article was reported in FINRA Disciplinary Actions for November 2017.

For details on this case, go to ...  FINRA Disciplinary Actions Online, and refer to Case #2014043695702.