Accupoll developed an electronic voting machine for use in American elections, but Pacific Continental's research failed to spot that millions of shares were controlled by Jamie Mazur, 27, and his sister Jennifer, 26. These are the children of Sherman Mazur, a Californian fraudster jailed for six years in 1993 and well-known to US watchdogs. And an address in Santa Monica, California, linked to Accupoll was also used by Regis Possino, a disbarred lawyer and a convicted fraudster. Should Pacific Continental have spotted all this? Griggs thinks not. Admitting that he had 'only recently' found that Sherman Mazur was involved in Accupoll, he told me: 'It would not be reasonable to expect our due diligence, or that of any other firm, to necessarily identify the criminal convictions of any minority shareholders of stocks recommended.' Well, I beg to differ. If I were a Pacific Continental client, this is exactly the sort of thing I would want to know about before signing a cheque for £24,000. I suppose, though, that all this would be academic if Accupoll turned out to be a huge success. In fact, it notched up huge losses and last January it went bust, taking investors' cash with it. Not that this necessarily hurt Pacific Continental. For as well as charging commission to investors, it received far bigger payments from the companies whose shares it sold. I think you should complain to the FSA, simply because so many people have made similar complaints that it is hard to see that they can all be wrong. In fact, Pacific Continental paid one client £100,000 on condition he stopped talking to me. I shall be interested to learn how your complaint is answered. I handdelivered seven complaints to the FSA about Pacific Continental, last year. I am sure they were considered. But I have no idea what, if anything, was done by the FSA.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
