NASAA Identifies Emerging and Continuing Threats to Investors

The Enforcement Section of the North American Securities Administrators Association ("NASAA") identified emerging and persistent threats that investors are likely to face in 2015.

The top threats that NASAA identified as emerging included:

• binary options,
• marijuana industry investments,
• stream-of-income investments and
• digital currency and cybersecurity risks.

The top threats identified as persistent included:

• Reg D/Rule 506 Private Offerings,
• pyramid and other Ponzi schemes,
• real estate schemes (including those that use promissory notes),
• affinity fraud,
• Internet fraud (including the misuse of social media and crowdfunding) and
• oil and gas investments in the "fracking era."

The NASAA noted that unregistered individuals (e.g., persons who are not registered properly as salespersons of SEC-registered broker-dealers) continue to be the most common subject of enforcement actions by state securities regulators.

See: Press Release.