Securities Lawyers Blog
Advisor Christopher Bice (Bice), currently employed by SagePoint Financial, Inc. (SagePoint Financial) has been subject to at least four customer complaints and one termination for cause during the course of his career. According to a BrokerCheck report some of the customer complaints concern variable annuities and alternative investments such as direct participation products (DPPs) like non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), oil & gas programs, annuities, and equipment leasing programs. The attorneys at Gana Weinstein LLP have extensive experience handling investor losses caused by these types of products.
Bice operates under the d/b/a name Bice Wealth Management. In addition, Bice has several other disclosed outside business activities including Shelton, Nelson & Associates, rental property sales, and Southeast Retirement Planners.
In November 2018 a customer complained that Bice violated the securities laws by alleging that the financial advisor made unsuitable investments, overconcentration, misrepresentations, and failure to supervise causing $1,000,000 in damages. The claim is currently pending.
In February 2018 a customer complained that Bice violated the securities laws by alleging that the financial advisor made unsuitable investments, overconcentration, misrepresentations, and failure to supervise causing $750,000 in damages. The claim is currently pending.
Our firm often handles cases involving annuities and direct participation products, Non-Traded REITs, oil and gas offerings, equipment leasing products, and other alternative investments. These products are almost always unsuitable for investors. In addition, the brokers who sell them are paid additional commission in order to hype inferior quality investments which provides a perverse incentives by brokers to create an artificial market for products that no honest advisor would sell.
According to studies, non-traded REITs have historically have underperformed even safe benchmarks, like U.S. treasury bonds – meaning that non-traded REITs provide paltry investment returns considering the risk an investor takes. Alternative investment products like oil and gas partnerships, REITs, and equipment leasing programs are rarely, if ever, appropriate for investors due to their high costs, illiquidity, high risks, and huge redemption charges of the products, if they can be redeemed at all. Investors often fail to understand that they have lost money until many years after agreeing to the investment.
Unfortunately, due to the high commissions brokers earn on these products they sell them to investors who cannot profit from them. These products have become so popular among brokers without providing any benefit to investors that many states now limit investors from investing more than 10% of their liquid assets in Non-Traded REITs. Many states impose these limitations because its understood that that they provide virtually no benefit to investors in relationship to their risks.
Bice entered the securities industry in 1999. Since October 2005 Bice has been registered with SagePoint Financial out of the firm’s Greesboro, Mooresville, and Salisbury, North Carolina office locations.
Investors who have suffered losses are encouraged to contact us at (800) 810-4262 for consultation. At Gana Weinstein LLP, our attorneys are experienced representing investors who have suffered securities losses due to the mishandling of their accounts. Claims may be brought in securities arbitration before FINRA. Our consultations are free of charge and the firm is only compensated if you recover.