In June 2026, after a four-day hearing, a FINRA arbitration panel awarded $2.7 million to an elderly client of Silver Law Group who had lost virtually everything she invested. The advisor, Edwin Lickiss, had operated a Ponzi scheme for decades out of a branch office of Arkadios Capital in Alamo, California. His son, also registered with Arkadios, worked out of the same office.
The claim that produced the award was not primarily about the fraud itself. It was about supervision. Brokerage firms are required to supervise the representatives who work under their name, and that duty extends to small, remote branch offices where a single advisor may operate with little day-to-day oversight. When a firm takes the benefit of an advisor's book of business, it also takes on responsibility for how that business is run.
This is why the identity of the person who wronged you is rarely where the analysis ends. An advisor who has spent client money is often judgment-proof by the time the scheme collapses. The brokerage firm that hired him, held the accounts, and failed to catch the pattern usually is not. In FINRA arbitration, failure to supervise, along with negligence and failure to conduct due diligence, is frequently the claim that produces an actual recovery.
The same principle drives structured product cases. An investor sold an unsuitable auto-callable note is not only asking whether that one recommendation was appropriate. The question is also how the firm's supervisory system allowed a conservative, income-focused account to become concentrated in complex derivative products, and whether anyone at the firm ever measured those recommendations against what they knew about the client's age, objectives, and tolerance for risk.
If you lost money on an investment your advisor recommended, the firm that employed that advisor may bear responsibility even if you never spoke to anyone there. A free case evaluation is the way to find out which claims your facts support.