A financial advisor who was barred by FINRA two years ago and fired by his firm in 2018 now faces hate crimes charges alleging he stole from victims because of their ages.
Louis Cook selected two victims in 2019 and 2020 based in “whole or substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding [their] age,” according to a March 3 indictment in the Supreme Court of Staten Island, New York, against him and his business, Nevsadi. FINRA
The indictment charges Cook, 61, with six counts of grand larceny with three of them as hate crimes. It represents the latest disturbing turn in the story of a planner who once ran a company focusing on wealth management for individuals with mental or physical disabilities and their loved ones. In recent years,
The Staten Island Advance first
In accepting the bar from FINRA in 2020, Cook didn’t admit or deny the regulator’s findings in the earlier case. An attorney for Cook didn’t respond to Financial Planning’s request for comment, but he did speak to the local news outlet.
“This is not a hate crime,” attorney Scott Cerbin
Securities Service Network fired Cook in 2018 based on the variable annuity allegations, according to the FINRA settlement.
“Consistent with our expectation that financial advisors adhere to the highest possible ethical and professional standards, SSN terminated this individual’s affiliation with the firm in 2018,” spokesman Joseph Kuo said in a statement.
The firm
Business on the side
In October 2014, Cook had listed a non-investment-related business named “Special Needs Team LLC” where he was the co-owner,
“Many of these customers were financially unsophisticated, elderly or parents of children with developmental disabilities,” the document states.
In 2016, Cook convinced at least 11 clients to sign a third-party authorization form that gave him the right to make changes or withdraw funds from their variable annuities in order to pay advisory fees, according to FINRA. He told them falsely that he needed those forms to continue servicing the annuities without limiting their options and because they were required under the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule issued in 2015, according to investigators.
“The customers did not intend to authorize Cook to withdraw funds from their variable annuities for his own personal use,” the settlement order states. “Cook improperly used those funds.”
Hate crimes
Most states make financial exploitation of the elderly a discrete charge, and there are few, if any, cases in which authorities have filed hate crimes against advisors in connection with fraud, according to Christine Lazaro, director of the Securities Arbitration Clinic at the St. John’s University School of Law. Lazaro noted that New York is the only state that doesn’t include a private right of action for individual investors in its securities laws.
“It may be that this was an attempt to ensure that there were heightened penalties because it was an elderly victim,” Lazaro said. “There are heightened penalties in other states when the victim is elderly.”
Recent studies of exploitation of elders have calculated the annual losses at billions of dollars nationwide,
Without any contribution from Cook, National Planning settled a 2018 client complaint for $47,498 after the investor alleged that “fees were debited from variable annuity without proper disclosure,” BrokerCheck shows. It’s not immediately clear whether the victims in the latest case against Cook may have also been swindled in the earlier scheme alleged by FINRA.
The New York Police Department arrested Cook on March 4, and a judge released him on bail after he pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to the available court records online. In the indictment, Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon’s office alleges that the thefts occurred in March and June 2019 and October 2020. Cook faces two counts of grand larceny in the second degree and four in the third degree, according to the indictment.
