“In most professions, it would take only one or two acts of egregious conduct before troubled employees were shown the door. In the case of one stockbroker who has repeatedly had complaints from investors, it took 69 customer disputes filed over the last 13 years before he was barred from the business.

“The stockbroker, Jerry A. Cicolani Jr., had complaint after complaint documented in his formal record. Regulators and employers spotted red flags. Yet the organization primarily responsible for monitoring the nation’s 637,000 brokers, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, did not bar Mr. Cicolani until September 2014.”

“The Securities and Exchange Commission had already sued him, in May 2014, over his role in a Ponzi scheme. His most recent employer, PrimeSolutions Securities, based in Cleveland, fired him a day after that lawsuit was filed. And his customers had lodged complaints as far back as 2002.”

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Read the full New York Times article by Susan Antilla here.