David Poole is the Consumer Investments Solutions & Client Services Executive and leads the Consumer Investments Solutions & Client Services team in Bank of America Corporation’s Merrill division. Prior to joining Bank of America in 2013, he held various senior leadership roles across sales and service at E*Trade over a 14 year period. His most recent role at E*Trade was Vice President of Customer Service. Poole holds an MBA degree from University of Georgia as well as a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree. He received a Certificate of Financial Planning from Florida State University and holds Series 7, 63, 24, and 4 FINRA registrations.
Merrill Edge aka “MLPF&S” or “Merrill”
Aron Levine is the Head of Consumer Banking & Investments and the Consumer Investments group at Merrill Edge. Levine joined the company through Fleet Financial group in 1993 and has held leadership roles in Commercial Real Estate Banking, Marketing, Corporate Strategy, and Global Wealth Management. He graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in both Economics and History.
Mark Faulk is an Oklahoma City filmmaker and Occupy OKC activist. He is the founder and contributing editor of the faulkingtruth.com, an advocacy site for political reform. After he exposed the fact that American companies were being listed and sold on the Berlin Stock Exchange without their knowledge or permission, more than 200 of them petitioned the German government to be removed from that Exchange. Faulk published a book i 2008 titled, The Naked Truth: Investing in the Stock Play of the Lifetime.
Stanley Freeman Druckenmiller is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the former chairman and president of Duquesne Capital, which he founded in 1981. He closed the fund in August 2010 because he felt unable to deliver high returns to his clients. At the time of closing, Duquesne Capital had over $12 billion in assets. From 1988 to 2000, he managed money for George Soros as the lead portfolio manager for Quantum Fund. In 2017, his net worth was estimated at $4.4 billion. Druckenmiller graduated from Bowdoin College (BA) at the University of Michigan.
Michael E. Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings and a co-founder of Galaxy Digital LP — a cryptocurrency-focused merchant bank based in New York. Formerly a fund manager at the Fortress Investment Group, Novogratz is a noted cryptocurrency proponent, saying in 2017 that at least 20% of his net worth was in Bitcoin and Ether. Prior to joining Fortress, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs where he spent much time abroad. Novogratz is a 1987 graduate of Princeton University.
Mark Valentine was the former chairman of Thomson Kernaghan & Co., a securities broker-dealer located in Ontario, Canada. Valentine controlled a significant amount of C-Me-Run, Inc. (“C-Me-Run”), SoftQuad Software, Ltd. (“SoftQuad”) and JagNotes.com, Inc. (“JagNotes”) stocks. He was arrested by German authorities in 2002 relating to a massive securities fraud and money-laundering scam that has resulted in indictments against 58 people. In 2004, Valentine pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in violation of Title 15 of the United States Code, Section 78j(b) and 78ff before the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in Unites States v. Mark Valentine, et al., Criminal Indictment No. 02-80088-CR-Cohn. On May 21, 2004, a judgment in the criminal case was entered against Valentine. Valentine was sentenced to four years of probation with nine months of home detention and other special conditions of supervision and ordered to pay a $100 assessment to the court.
David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He also writes regularly for The Intercept and The Nation. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in an Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. Dayen lives in Venice, California.
Steven A. Cohen is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, He is the founder of hedge funds Point72 Asset Management and now-closed S.A.C. Capital Advisors, both based in Stamford, Connecticut. In 2013, the Cohen-founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines in one of the biggest criminal cases against a hedge fund. Cohen was prohibited from managing outside money for 2 years as part of the settlement. The hedge fund agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and to close to outside investors.
Richard Choo-Beng Lee, who co-founded Spherix Capital and once was an analyst at SAC Capital, pled guilty in 2009 along with Spherix co-founder Ali Far, admitting to engaging in an insider trading scheme that enabled Spherix to make $5 million. Lee secretly informed on various individuals and recorded several phone calls with 28 people, including billionaire Steven A. Cohen, whose SAC Capital employed Lee as an analyst from 1999 to 2004, prosecutors said. Lee was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan to pay a $100,000 fine in light of his 2009 guilty plea.
Ali Far is a former employee at the Galleon Group. He left in 2008 to start his own Hedge fund (Spherix Capital Partners) with his Partner, Richard Choo-Beng Lee, aka “C.B.” Far was sentenced to one year of probation for his participation in multiple insider trading schemes during which he obtained, shared, and traded based on material, non-public information (“inside information”) stolen from several public companies. Far pled guilty in October 2009 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of securities fraud pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the government. Together, he and his co-conspirator at Spherix gained approximately $5,209,464 for their hedge fund by placing trades in Spherix accounts based on Inside Information.