Financial Industry Regulatory Authority

A $1.2 Million Bank Error Buys a House, and an Arrest, Officials Say

It was the type of windfall that investors pine for with every rally on Wall Street: $1,205,619.56 had inexplicably ended up in the brokerage account of a 911 dispatcher in Louisiana in February.

But the next day, when Charles Schwab tried to recover the money it had deposited in error into the account of Kelyn Spadoni, the authorities said, about a quarter of the funds were already gone. For about a month, the company said, calls, emails and text messages to Ms. Spadoni went unanswered.

The funds had been transferred to another account and used by Ms. Spadoni to buy a house and a Hyundai Genesis sport utility vehicle, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. She was arrested on fraud and theft charges on April 7 and fired as a dispatcher the same day, the Sheriff’s Office said.

In a lawsuit filed against Ms. Spadoni in federal court in New Orleans, Charles Schwab said that it was supposed to have moved only $82.56 into Ms. Spadoni’s Fidelity Brokerage Services account, but that a software glitch had caused it to mistakenly transfer the seven-figure sum.

“I think most people understand about how much money is in their bank accounts,” Capt. Jason Rivarde, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview on Monday. “When you’re expecting $80 and you get $1.2 million, there’s probably something wrong there.”

Ms. Spadoni, 33, of Harvey, La., has been charged with bank fraud, illegal transmission of monetary funds and theft greater than $25,000, the authorities said. She had been a dispatcher for four and a half years in the parish, just outside New Orleans.

She did not immediately respond to phone and email requests for comment on Monday, and there was no record that she had a lawyer.

Ms. Spadoni was released on $150,000 bond on Thursday, according to Captain Rivarde, who said that a vast majority of the missing money had been recovered.

A spokesman for Charles Schwab said in an email on Sunday night that the company was fully cooperating with the authorities in an effort to resolve the issue, but declined to comment further.

According to the company, Ms. Spadoni opened the brokerage account in January, and the excess cash was added to a transfer request that she made in February.

Realizing the mistake, Schwab tried to reclaim the money through a computer system, but got a message that said “Cash not available,” the lawsuit said. A second attempt was also rejected, and Schwab received a message that said: “Insufficient funds, please work directly with the client to resolve.”

A Schwab employee called Ms. Spadoni four times but was unable to leave a message during two of those attempts because her answering machine was full, the lawsuit said. A corporate counsel for Schwab then called Ms. Spadoni at the Sheriff’s Office but was told that she was unavailable, according to the lawsuit, which said he then sent several text messages.

In its lawsuit, Schwab said that it had begun an arbitration proceeding against Ms. Spadoni with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, but that it would take two months for a resolution to the case. The company said it filed the lawsuit because it wanted to make sure that Ms. Spadoni did not spend the mistakenly transferred funds before the arbitration hearing.

“When you take something that obviously doesn’t belong to you,” Captain Rivarde said, “that would be theft.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Penny Stocks Are Booming, Which Is Good News for Swindlers

“It’s all just a pool filled with sharks,” said Urska Velikonja, a law professor who studies securities regulation at Georgetown University Law Center. “It’s where the unwary go to get eaten.”

Penny stock booms tend to occur during raging bull markets, when greed abounds. They were hot in the 1980s, when the arrival of cheap, long-distance telephone service gave rise to brokerage firms that specialized in high-pressure, cold-call pitches of worthless stocks.

That was the specialty of Blinder, Robinson & Company, which was led by Meyer Blinder, a New York broker with a flamboyant reputation. In the mid-80s, it became the largest penny stock brokerage in the country. But by 1990 it had been liquidated, and by 1992 Mr. Blinder had been convicted of racketeering and securities fraud. After his conviction was announced, he lunged at a prosecutor, threatening to kill him.

But stock-touting technology changes with the times. Cold-calling went out, followed by faxes and email spam. Today, social media sites like Twitter and Reddit, which powered the rise of GameStop and other meme stocks, are the preferred method for building unwarranted hype.

According to a civil complaint filed this month by the S.E.C., Andrew Fassari of Irvine, Calif., used his Twitter account — OCMillionaire — to pump up the price of Arcis Resources, a company that has not conducted business since at least 2016, but whose stock still trades. Mr. Fassari, regulators said, bought 41 million shares of the company and then posted misleading information, including fictitious emails from the company’s purported chief executive about expansion plans. Over nine days in December, the share price skyrocketed more than 4,000 percent — to a little over a nickel. Mr. Fassari’s gains were $929,000, according to the agency.

Mr. Fassari’s lawyer, Jessica C. Munk, said he denied wrongdoing. “It appears Mr. Fassari has been hit with fallout from the GameStop, Robinhood, Reddit controversy,” Ms. Munk said in a statement, including a reference to the Robinhood trading app. She also noted the S.E.C. action’s “lightning pace.”

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