The Honorable John F. Keenan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered judgments against defendants Marek Leszczynski, Benjamin Chouchane and Henry Condron (collectively, the "brokers") in the SEC's fraud case against the listed defendants. The SEC charged the brokers, who formerly worked on the cash desk at a broker-dealer firm, with illegally overcharging customers $18.7 million by using hidden markups and markdowns and secretly keeping portions of profitable customer trades. The fraudulent charges involved more than 36,000 transactions during a four

FINRA filed a proposed rule change with the SEC that would broaden an arbitrator's authority to make referrals during an arbitration proceeding. See: Text of the Proposed Rule Change.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC") announced the appointment of Mary H. Scherf as Deputy Comptroller for Large Bank Supervision. As the Deputy Comptroller for Large Bank Supervision, Ms. Scherf will oversee Large Bank's lead experts, shared national credit, data analytics, and systems teams and assume various other responsibilities as part of Large Bank Supervision management. Additionally, the new role will involve working with policy, midsize and community bank supervision, and legal departments within the OCC, as well as domestic and international regulatory peers. See

The MSRB filed with the SEC a proposal to streamline and consolidate into a single rule the existing obligations of municipal securities dealers related to fair pricing. Under the proposal, most pricing obligations would be contained in revised MSRB Rule G-30 ("Prices and Commissions"), including duties and guidance under current MSRB Rule G-18 ("Execution of Transactions") and Rule G-17 ("Conduct of Municipal Securities and Municipal Advisory Activities").The proposal indicated that the new rule was intended to consolidate and codify existing rules and interpretations rather than change

The SEC announced that Barbara S. Lorenzen was named the National Associate Director of the SEC Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations ("OCIE") Clearance and Settlement Program. See: Press Release.