Investor's Watchdog.com: Stock, finance and investment protection for investors

Registered investment advisers (RIAs) are different from stockbrokers; at least they are supposed to be.  RIAs owe you a fiduciary duty, which means that they are supposed to put your interests first and disclose any possible conflicts of interest.  But many investment advisers do not live up to that duty.  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained judgments against two stockbrokers who paid bribes to investment advisers to induce them to use those stockbrokers in placing trades for their clients accounts.  According to the SEC and U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel David Harrison Baker, Daniel Schrieber, and Schrieber’s firm, Granite Financial Group, paid bribes to two RIAs, Brian Travis and Nicholas Vulpis.  According to the SEC’s complaint:

The bribes took the form of payments for expensive travel, rent for a personal residence, and daily car service. In exchange for those bribes, Travis and Vulpis directed trades, and the resulting commissions, to those broker-dealers paying the bribes. Travis and Vulpis did not disclose these bribes or the material conflict of interest that they created to the investment advisor, defrauding the hedge funds that JLF advised.

All RIAs are not the same.  An RIA who accepts bribes from stockbrokers does not have your best interests in mind. Before you entrust your nest egg to one, ask whether he or she has hired an independent investigator to keep an eye on him.