SEC Charges Unregistered Brokers Who Sold Woodbridge Securities to Main Street Investors

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged five individuals and four companies for unlawfully selling securities of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC to retail investors. Woodbridge collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2017 and the SEC previously charged the company, its owner, and others with operating a massive $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. The Florida-based defendants named in the SEC’s complaints, Barry M. Kornfeld, Ferne Kornfeld, Lynette M. Robbins, Andrew G. Costa, Albert D. Klager, and their companies, were among Woodbridge’s top revenue producers, selling more than $243 million of its unregistered securities to more than 1,600 retail investors. The complaints allege that defendants reaped millions of dollars in commissions on their sales of Woodbridge securities even though they were not registered as broker-dealers and were not permitted to sell securities.