Morgan Stanley's client-screening faces deeper FINRA probe, WSJ reports
The probe examines client vetting, risk rankings and related practices across the Wall Street bank's wealth-management and trading operations from October 2021 through September 2024, the report said.
FINRA, a non-governmental self-regulatory organisation that oversees U.S. broker-dealers under federal law, is seeking information on U.S. and international clients across Morgan Stanley's wealth unit, including E*Trade, and its institutional securities division, according to the Journal.
The regulator has also requested organisational charts, reporting lines and details on the firm's client risk-scoring tool, the report added.
Some employees raised concerns that the initial data sent to FINRA was incomplete or inaccurate, prompting the bank to provide additional information after the regulator flagged gaps, the Journal said.
A Morgan Stanley spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal the bank has made significant investments in its anti-money-laundering and client-vetting programmes, adding that such regulatory reviews are not unique to the bank and do not indicate problems with its business or controls.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. FINRA declined to comment, while Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FINRA fined Morgan Stanley $10 million in December 2018 for anti-money laundering compliance failures over a five-year period.
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The Independent
27 minutes ago
- The Independent
Alan Dershowitz says he's suing Martha's Vineyard vendor for refusing to sell him pierogi
If there's one thing that can be counted on every summer, it is that Alan Dershowitz will make a loud public stink about the social angst he suffers at Martha's Vineyard. This time around, the former Jeffrey Epstein lawyer is crying foul that he was refused pierogi at a farmer's market, claiming he was discriminated against due to his political beliefs and that he will be suing the vendor for violating his rights. Meanwhile, a local resident who captured Dershowitz being confronted by local police over the incident tells The Independen t that he stepped in to stop the famed defense attorney from continuing to harass the vendor, who reached out to thank him later and even offered him some free pierogi for his troubles. 'I'm somewhat fearless when it comes to facing these types of bullies,' the vendor said. Dershowitz, who has been in the news recently amid the uproar over the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files, took to his social media accounts Wednesday night to loudly complain about the latest shunning he'd experienced at the summer playground for the ultra-wealthy. 'Bigoted vendor @ Martha's Vineyard Farmer's Market refused to sell to me for political reasons. I'm suing,' he tweeted while promoting an upcoming broadcast of his online show on Rumble, a right-wing-friendly alternative to YouTube. During his Rumble show that evening, Dershowitz reiterated that he would be filing a lawsuit against the business Good Pierogi, making sure to toss in a bit of criticism about their product for good measure. 'There was the pierogi place,' Dershowitz said. 'They're Ukrainian, Russian delicacies. And I had gone there a few times before, and I bought the pierogi. They were OK. They were not my grandmother's pierogi, but they were OK.' He went on to claim that after he asked for six pierogi, the vendor told him they wouldn't sell to him because they 'don't approve' of his politics, who he has represented legally in the past and who he supports politically. 'The clear implication was that he opposed me because I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate,' he added. 'I think that's illegal.' In a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday by resident Chris Hulbert, Dershowitz could be seen speaking to a West Tisbury police officer about the incident. Throughout the exchange, Dershowitz could be heard griping that the vendor 'won't sell to me' while the officer pulled the emeritus Harvard Law professor to the side to talk about the issue. With Dershowitz also taping the conversation on his phone, the officer disagreed with Dershowitz that Good Pierogi was violating Massachusetts law because he understood that private establishments had the right of refusal. While the officer added that the former Trump impeachment attorney could pursue a complaint against the vendor through 'civil means,' he also asked for Dershowitz to stay away from the vendor and the respect that it was private property. Dershowitz, on the other hand, continued to debate that the vendor did not have the right to discriminate against him based on his personal politics – all while pointing out that he would be posting the footage online. In his Instagram post, Hulbert claimed that he stopped the celebrity lawyer 'from harassing a vendor who wouldn't serve him pierogi at the farmer's market on Martha's Vineyard,' noting that he also 'made a statement to the police.' Hulbert further asserted that the police officer had threatened to cite Dershowitz for trespassing if he bothered other vendors, insisting that three others at the market also refused to serve the attorney. 'The police took a [statement] from me. No one else wanted to do it because he sues everyone here. Was talking about suing the vendor. Total scum!' Hulbert wrote, prompting Good Pierogi to reply 'thank you so much' on his Instagram post. In an interview with The Independent, Hulbert spoke about his interaction with Dershowitz, noting that he wasn't initially aware that it was the celebrated lawyer when he first happened upon him. 'He was already rejected by the vendor, and then started b*tching and complaining and videotaping his statements to try to dissuade people from patronizing the vendor, and I walked up and I had no idea who he was,' Hulbert said. 'So his statement was that because of his political views, they weren't serving him.' After Hulbert asked what political views caused him to be refused service and whether it was because he's a 'Trumper,' he claimed that Dershowitz insisted it's 'the opposite' and that he 'opposes Trump.' Instead, according to Hulbert, Dershowitz said 'they object to my clients' before revealing that he's represented Trump and Epstein. At this point, Hulbert noted, he realized who Dershowitz was. After Hulbert claimed he told Dershowitz that he'd be 'really pleased to know' that he was the vice president of Take Back New York and lobbied for the passage of New York's sex offender registry act, he said Dershowitz became distracted and briefly stopped bothering and videotaping the vendor. Hulbert also told The Independent that it was the police officer who informed him that three other vendors at the market had complained about Dershowitz and also may have refused him service as well. While Hulbert says he hasn't heard back from the police department or Dershowitz amid the legal complaints, he did note that Good Pierogi had thanked him for coming to their aid and offered to give him some free pierogi. He also said that he wasn't worried about any potential blowback from Dershowitz himself. 'If I had to, I could defend myself or retain counsel if I needed to fight fire with fire,' he concluded. 'I'm somewhat fearless when it comes to facing these types of bullies.' When reached for comment about the incident, West Tisbury Police Dept. Chief Matthew L. Mincone told The Independent that he's 'reviewing the information and will forward any/all reports per' our request. Dershowitz and Good Pierogi did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In recent years, it has become commonplace for Dershowitz to grouse about his social suffering at the exclusive enclave, which he has largely chalked up to his defense of Trump since the president's first administration. After Dershowitz first began griping in 2018 that he'd become ostracized by the Martha's Vineyard social elite, the New York Times ran no less than four separate stories about his complaints – including an interview with the longtime Harvard Law professor. In fact, the Times' executive editor admitted that the Gray Lady had done too many Dershowitz stories. 'We are trying to increase our coverage of cranky white guys,' Dean Baquet joked to The Daily Beast at the time. 'Seriously, it's a big place and different desks made their own plans. We should have coordinated better and done fewer.' Since then, Dershowitz has continued to publicly fume about being 'blackballed' on the island, which has included book fairs canceling his appearances, invitations to cocktail parties drying up and comedian Larry David 'screaming' at him at a Chilmark store. On top of that, Dershowitz made his 'cancellation' at Martha's Vineyard one of the central themes in his 2022 book The Price of Principle: Why Integrity Is Worth the Consequences.
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Hulk Hogan the man did terrible things. But the character was revolutionary
When Hulk Hogan died and a rush of people searched his name on Google to read various obituaries, I'm sure at least some of them were shocked to find that one of the most popular search terms related to the WWE Hall of Famer is 'Hulk Hogan lies.' There are countless videos, Reddit threads, social media posts and articles detailing all the things the Hulkster apparently said that were either exaggerations, distortions or outright fabrications. One time, Hogan said he was asked to play in Metallica. The band denied the story straight away. Hulk said in his autobiography that he partied with John Belushi after WrestleMania 2 in 1986, even though Belushi had died in 1982. There's also the time where Hulk thought the Jackass star Bam Margera was dead when he very much was not. If you aren't a wrestling fan (you're reading the Guardian. You're probably not a wrestling fan) you might wonder why someone who was famous for four decades would feel the need to lie about whether he could have been in Metallica. These are the sorts of lies the quarterback of your high school tells at the reunion. 'Andre the Giant was 700lbs when I bodyslammed him in from of 200,000 people at the Roman Colosseum' is definitely an anecdote that could get you a free shot at the no-host bar at the Elks Lodge, but if you're Hulk Hogan, you could just be honest and say Andre was more like 400lbs and the crowd was between 80,000 and 93,000, depending on whom you ask. Also, it was in Pontiac, Michigan, not Rome. Hulk Hogan did not need to lie, but he did. Often. Lying, fabrication and multiple layers of reality are fundamental tenets of professional wrestling at every level of the industry. In 2019, I worked at WWE as a writer for their TV show SmackDown just long enough to get fired. I wasn't there for enough time to actually get good at the art of crafting a compelling wrestling story, but I was there long enough to realize that the most crucial element of wrestling is some form of dishonesty. The performer's job is to approximate reality, to portray their character not just on TV, but on social media, in the press, and sometimes even at the airport. Wrestling is performance art on an entirely different level. Terry Bollea had to live his life as Hulk Hogan – the bandana, the tank tops, the white mustache. In his now-infamous reality show, Hogan Knows Best, despite the conceit of seeing inside Hulk's real home, he was still that character. Terry Bollea was so committed to being Hulk Hogan that he had a formal bandana for black tie events. No one would be mad if he wore, say, a Kangol hat or maybe … no hat at all? When Hogan testified in the Gawker trial, it was shocking to hear him refer to 'Terry Bollea' and 'Hulk Hogan' as two different people. The line wasn't just blurred. It was wiped away completely. In the pro wrestling parlance, this veil of fiction is called 'kayfabe' – a word with its origin in the old-timey carnival culture that wrestling evolved from. Kayfabe is both a noun to describe the glorious unreality of wrestling and a verb to describe when someone is subtly lying to you (or hiding something incredibly important). In WWE, there are layers of kayfabe, with fewer and fewer people smartened up to what's happening the deeper you go. The outcomes of the matches are kayfabed. Who is wrestling in the main event of WrestleMania 42 next spring is super kayfabed. This doesn't seem that terribly different from protecting the ending of a summer blockbuster film, but when you're inside the business, you realize that everything can be kayfabed. How can you trust anything anyone says? WWE just launched a reality show on Netflix called Unreal, which claims to lift the veil on the behind-the-scenes creation of their storylines. I immediately said to myself: 'This is just another layer of kayfabe.' The sacred work of wrestling is to make people believe, to bend the truth just enough to make a few bucks off our curiosity. This is the world Hulk Hogan lived in. I still love wrestling, and despite the horrible things he said and did, I still see Hulk Hogan the character as one of the most influential heroes in American history. He managed to make the most mundane, thunderingly obvious credo ('say your prayers and eat your vitamins, kids!') sound revolutionary. He knew how to captivate an audience with nothing more than a gesture. He understood the art of platonic seduction – the way to get someone to not just love you, but to think that their struggle is also yours. Wrestling fans – both children and adults – could live vicariously through Hulk Hogan. His appeals in his speeches were to his 'Hulkamaniacs', the fans that gave him the strength to do the impossible. At WrestleMania 3, if Andre the Giant wanted to beat Hulk Hogan for the WWE Championship, he'd also have to contend with the millions of Hulkamaniacs cheering for him. In the unreality of pro wrestling, you, the audience member, are the real protagonist. Hulk Hogan is merely a vessel for you to travel in. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is. One of Hulk Hogan's last televised appearances was at the Republican national convention in 2024. He tore a Trump T-shirt off his body instead of a Hulkamania shirt and pledged his full fealty to our future president. In some twisted way, it was a passing of the torch. For years, Hulk Hogan had been the apex of wrestling's art of unreality. His talent for leading the masses peaked around 1988, and as the world got more savvy about WWE's particular magic trick, the connection severed. He left for a rival company, became a bad guy, and reinvented the art form again. But it could never be quite what it was in the mid-80s. Wrestlers such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and John Cena could captivate a crowd, but it was nothing like Hulkamania. No one would or could ever truly believe like that again. This is why WWE has to open up (or at least pretend to), like the Soviet Union at the end of the cold war. After years of sitting under the learning tree of WWE's former owner, Vince McMahon, Donald Trump took the tools of platonic seduction that Hulk Hogan perfected and applied them to politics. The use of the word 'we', the commonality of struggle, the dastardly enemies to defeat in righteous combat. Even the empty slogans. Is 'make America great again' that far removed from 'say your prayers and eat your vitamins'? When Hulk Hogan exaggerated a story or outright lied, he'd very rarely retract his statement. When he was allowed back in the WWE locker room after tape of his racist tirade circulated publicly, he spent most of his apology warning fellow wrestlers to be careful about 'getting caught'. Hulk Hogan was a man who made his own truth. He didn't need to do anything other than live in the world he made for himself. The more he made up about himself, the grander he became. He was truly the greatest American hero, because he personified the most American virtue of them all: you do not have to be you. And the more he fashioned himself a superhero, the more we wanted to be him – to fully merge with him into one entity. This power was both awe-inspiring and perhaps the most terrifying weapon any human being could wield in this life. Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Reuters
28 minutes ago
- Reuters
About 154,000 federal workers took Trump administration's buyout offers, source says
WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters) - Roughly 154,000 federal employees have taken buyouts offered by the Trump administration this year, part of a broader push to slim the federal workforce, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The resignations, which amount to 6.7% of the civilian federal workforce, are the result of a program launched in January by billionaire Elon Musk, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, with an email titled "Fork in the Road." The buyouts included staff at the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, and the Internal Revenue Service, among others. Similar buyout offers were made in the following months at different agencies. The number of employees taking buyouts was first reported by the Washington Post. In exchange for leaving, the administration agreed to pay the employees for several months after ceasing work, but all will be off federal payrolls by the end of the year, the person emphasized. "In normal times, a 6.7% turnover rate would not be unusual for the federal government," said Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy. "But these are not normal times. Along with the firing of probationary employees and other large-scale reductions in force, the deferred resignation program deeply cuts government capacity." The White House and the Office of Personnel Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Attrition in the U.S. government's civilian workforce was 5.9%, or 116,000 workers, in 2023, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that compiles statistics on federal staff. Employees opted into the buyout program amid plans from Trump and Musk to eliminate their jobs. Days after the administration closed its initial buyout offer, the administration fired tens of thousands of employees who were new to their jobs. Cabinet secretaries have promised more cuts in the coming months. The 154,000 workers who took buyouts do not include staff who were fired or opted into other programs to slash the federal payrolls, such as an incentive program to retire early.
