First he was a soldier who murdered sixteen Afghan citizens.
Then he was an excellent solider, and he was whisked back to the States.
The he was Robert Bales, beleagured family man, with debts and housing issues.
And now he’s Robert Bales, criminal financial analyst.
Here are some excerpts from the article linked above.
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The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan left for war without paying a $1.5 million judgment for defrauding an elderly client in a stock scheme, and remains shielded from the obligation as long as he remains in the military, legal experts said.
Bales joined the Army 18 months after an Ohio investor filed an arbitration complaint alleging unauthorized trading, breach of contract and other abuses against him, his securities firm and the firm’s owner.
[He was penalized and skipped out on his enormous fine by heading to Afghanistan, where he is exempt from his debt.]
Bales [initially worked] at Hamilton-Shea Group, a brokerage that was expelled from NASD in 2001 and fined $1.4 million over several issues … “the kind of place where you learn to cold call, to ‘pump and dump’.”
Neither FINRA nor the Ohio Divison of Securities ever suspended Bales, who simply let his securities license lapse.
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So, while they were telling us he’s an excellent and misunderstood soldier, stateside he’s a predator defrauding the elderly out of their savings. What did he do? My guess is at the least he placed trades without the client’s permission in order to generate more commissions for himself.
He learned to ‘pump and dump’: buy a crap stock, tell your clients what a great stock it is, they buy it and artificially inflate the price, then you dump it at a profit. It’s an illegal practice favored by the Mafia. The slaughter of the civilians seems more in character now. This guy is heartless. It makes the whisking to the States understandable too – he’s a fugitive.
The most chilling sentence? Bales “simply let his securities license lapse.” What type of maniac lets that lapse? He has the take the Series 7 again!
6 responses to “And the Truth Seeps Out …”
Sociopath. Put the financial stuff together with the girlfriend stuff and the supposed PTSD stuff and yeah, that’s the recipe for a mass murderer.
Heck, joining the military to avoid a prison term is a time-honored tradition! Among psychos …
In the good old days young men were given the option of going to prison or going into the military. This is the same thing, but on a higher level.
Becs – What? Girlfriend stuff?RockyCat – I can see it as an alternative to paying 1.5 million, I guess.Hattie – This is news to me. How is it they didn’t immediatly organize once they got oveseas into little crime syndicates?
His girlfriend and/or wife had just broken up with him.
Becs – seems he could have shot himself instead of Afghanis.