Peregrine Bankruptcy Trustee Ends Dispute With JPMorgan

Peregrine Financial Group Inc.’s trustee agreed to settle a dispute with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a deal that will bring more than $15 million to creditors of the commodities firm.

Under the agreement filed yesterday JPMorgan will pay $1.25 million and release $14 million in cash that it was holding in cash on behalf of Peregine.

What´s a disgrace is that there was ever the option for JPM to NOT give back the money – It is the Peregine CLIENT Money, not theirs.

Peregrine, a Cedar Falls, Iowa-based commodities firm with offices in Chicago, filed for bankruptcy to liquidate in 2012 after the National Futures Association said more than $200 million in customer funds were missing. STOLEN, not missing – STOLEN because the NFA and the CFTC were NEGLIGENT in their previous investigations into Peregrine and its segregated accounts. It´s a fact that Peregrine were investigated on numerous occasions by officials, yet nothing was ever found to be wrong, even though hundreds of millions of dollars were not there in the accounts – Why not ask the NFA and CFTC exactly how they overlooked this?

The firm’s founder, Russell Wasendorf Sr., now serving a 50-year prison sentence for fraud and embezzlement, stole mostly from customers who traded on U.S. exchanges, the trustee said.

A group of customers that had sued Wasendorf and JPMorgan for $200 million also agreed to be part of the settlement.

After the bankruptcy was filed, New York-based JPMorgan claimed Peregrine owed it $2.2 million. SO WHAT? Peregrine owed its clients 200 MILLION. 

All in all, another disgrace where the banks do what they want, when they want. When will the government step up and take control?

Also ask yourself how the NFA and CFTC are able to dismiss any responsibility themselves, when it is them that failed to regulate sufficiently. 200MILLION Dollars is a tiny amount of money to them, to some who lost their account balances the amounts were life savings, some people lost everything and not one of this multi million dollar entities (CFTC, NFA, CME) will do anything about it.