Episode #24: JPMorgan Insider Tells All: The Hidden Damage Big Banks Do to Investors

This is the Untamed Ethos podcast. Join us as investment pros, executives, and other experts talk business, personal growth, investing, politics, and the trending topics well rounded pros need to know about. Authentic, unfiltered, and fun. Joshua Wilson is the founder of United Ethos Wealth Partners, a registered investment adviser. Due to industry regulations, he will not discuss any of United Ethos' investment advice on this participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of United Ethos or its affiliates. Welcome back to Untamed Ethos. My name is Joshua Wilson. And today, I have with me Robert Manila. Robert is an over a veteran of over thirty years on Wall Street as a financial adviser, and he is, he has a new book out called Heavily Redacted. Heavily Redacted is this is a story is his story as a whistleblower on Wall Street. He has got stories left you wouldn't believe about the kind of thing that happens in big banks, the higher happens in big brokerages, the behind the scenes narratives that Robert had that that Robert articulated in this book, which, Robert, I haven't finished the book yet, but she got me on edge with just the first couple with just with just first half of the book. So very very well told. Far exceeding my expectations for a narrative already, but I'm anxious to talk to you today. Robert, give us just a brief introduction of of who you are and where you come from before we jump into this your experience at JPMorgan. Sure. Well, I got licensed in, nineteen eighty nine. And, you know, I've been through, a lot of ups and downs in the market. And I worked for a number of regional brokerage firms, but no one ever is big as JPMorgan. So when I got the chance to work for, JPMorgan, I jumped at it. It was in, two thousand and five, which is, you know, shortly after, the repeal of Glass Steagall, which allowed, banks to, get more involved with investments, targeting their, deposit base. So I felt that, it was an opportunity for me to work in the city. And since I grew up in the city, I was very close to my hometown, which was a nice fit. I was on Park Avenue, near Union Square. So it was a pretty exclusive neighborhood, and we had a lot of celebrities come in. I had celebrities that were my clients and a lot of high net worth people in all different types of industries, from, media to advertising to, to you name it. But, the little community in Gramercy Park that, my bank branch was in, was a very, tight knit, old money type community. They have a private, park in the the middle of Manhattan that only they can access, just to give you an idea of the, the type of money that's in there. And, so I went to work for them in two thousand five, and, it was right around the time that, Jamie Dimon joined JPMorgan. He came over from Bank One, after the two companies emerged. And so he was kind of on the scene at the same time I was as the bank is was going through this transformation. So the idea behind working for the bank was that you would call the depositors and invite them in for, an account review just to make sure that they were being, advised on a, financial products that they might need. Now most of your, bank customers are conservative. They have their money in CDs and savings accounts and so forth. And so our goal was to, take some of the money that they had in their CDs and or savings accounts and, tried to get them into a, fee based account, that would help them achieve their goals over the long term. That was the, you know, that was the main, goal at the time, for the firm. Yeah. And and when it comes down to these types of products, you know, one of the things that that I think some people try to make this into a binary of, you know, with what products are good and what products are bad. And it's not quite that simple as good products or bad products. There's products that are suitable products for a certain situation. Just like if someone came to me and they said, Joshua, what automobile would you recommend? I wouldn't tell you, here's the bad automobile. Here's the good automobile. I'd ask you some questions. You know? What are you using it for? How long are you driving? Are other people in the vehicle with you? But I'd have many questions for you. And so this, whenever we're talking about different investment products, now there there may be that something is abnormally expensive or, or just inappropriate or they're or or not disclosing, certain things about the investment. But, CDs can be perfectly good investments for for certain clients. Right, Robert? Right. Yeah. For for safety, most of your clients don't wanna take a risk with the money that they have. So they put it in a bank CD that they know is guaranteed, to not lose any principal. And they'll make a, fixed rate, that they can, take out of maturity. And so, the way I approached the the clients when I met with them is, you know, everybody's different, and everybody has different needs and different wants and different goals for the money that they have. So just because, the goal of JPMorgan was to kind of help everybody, get into a fee based account, because it was, better for them over the long term, was something that, you know, I kind of took as a, maybe a grain of salt because my main, priority, was as a fiduciary. And as a fiduciary, I wanted to do what was right for the client, not necessarily what was right for, the company's objectives or, you know, my own my own personal gain. And so lots of my clients who were conservative in nature because they're coming off of CDs, I would recommend things like, municipal bond funds, you know, or fixed annuities. So they were still able to get a higher rate of return while maintaining that level of of protection, that they were seeking, because the fee based accounts really had no track record. And, because the fees at the time, the management fees were one point six percent, for the first two hundred and fifty thousand dollars invested. And then on top of that, you had, third party fees, which were the mutual funds or whatever other vehicles were underneath the portfolio. And so a client really had to, outperform at least two percent a year, just to break even after fees. That might be generous. You know, by the time you you take an account that has a management fee of one point six percent, plus underlying investment fee that may be one or more percent, maybe one and a half percent in some instances. And then you also take the transaction fees, And this is one of the things that people forget about. You know, these these were mutual fund, managed accounts. So with mutual funds, you see the expense ratio, but you don't actually see the transaction fee. That's that's buried, because Correct. Transaction fees within the fund, are not part of the normal course of business. So the transaction fees technically will vary year to year. So you'd actually have to do quite a bit of research to really see how much you're actually paying on these things. So you've got the what you're paying the bank for the management slash and they and they give the adviser part of it. You've got the fund fee, then you've got the transaction fee. As well. You could be approaching three percent or more by the time you get into these things. Now there is a fee for doing business anytime you can. You're not going to there there there's it's not frictionless. Right? So Right. What was it about obviously, I guess, we've we've already, we've already talked about the the the high fees. Right? There's a fee, but you want to get to get, value out of that. What what else about, the particular, fee based or managed accounts, were concerning to you? Well, the high fees were were number one. The, you know, limited track record was was number two. And number three, I would be, you know, basing my reputation on, investments that I didn't feel were, you know, the best for certain clients. There were clients that, you know, this was appropriate for, you know, maybe some younger clients or working early on in their career with longer time horizons. It would it you know, it makes a lot of sense. But for the elderly clients, that were conservative, didn't wanna risk any money, maybe had been burned in the past in the stock market, didn't wanna go back into the stock market, but they still wanted to make more than they were making in their savings account. You know, there were ways for people to do that, without putting all their money at risk. So, because I treated everybody differently and I wasn't really going along with the program where, you know, everybody needs to be in a fee based account. Now whether it's equity based or fixed income based, my whole thing was the fees were too high. That was the first thing. The second thing was the risks weren't really being disclosed. And, that was a that was a problem for for me as well, because a lot of the, asset allocations had sleeves in, you know, things like small caps and, foreign stocks and currencies and commodities, you know, and those were far removed from the type of investments that people who are traditionally bank customers, you know, would would come to look for. Yeah. You know, I think one of the things too that I that and then, Robert, I I worked for JPMorgan Chase very briefly at the very beginning of of my career, so I have some experience with the platform. One of the things that, I found that bothered me was by the time a message is filtered down from, if a compliance officer told you, but then by the time a a sales manager presents it to you and then a wholesaler from an external firm who has a who has an interest in you selling their product Right. At the time that they're interpreting it to you as the adviser, that that mess that truth gets massaged, to put it very gently. And one of the things I've noticed is people would say, you know, our research, and they would talk about research. And our research, these funds, we recommend these and JPMorgan. What I actually found was it was not so much research as it was buying and selling agreements. It was, hey. We have a contract with these firms to offer these products, and that we we get a benefit from offering this versus a versus a different one. And the way that the way that I that I describe this to a to a client now is I would say, imagine if you walked into Chick fil A, and you say, what what what should I buy? What do you think they're gonna recommend at Chick fil a, Robert? They're gonna recommend a chicken sandwich is what they're gonna recommend, maybe some chicken strips. Right? Because that's what's on the menu. And so if someone else has already been has already controlled the menu, and so it's not truly, when you when you're when you're buying a spot on the menu, then you can't tell me that the the advisors are are this is based on research. It's based on who is paying you. And so if a client would come in, the branch would say, hey. I heard about this, and, well, it's not on my menu, so I don't recommend that. I don't recommend anything that's already not on my menu. But the the the problem with this is it there's a difference. This is a nuance. There's a difference in saying, that, it doesn't meet our criteria versus the truth is is we don't have a buying and selling agreement with them. That's a very different different nuance there is why are we not selling it is because we think it's bad or we think it's poor or it doesn't meet our, criteria. Because there's other funds that meet all the criteria, that would pass the criteria. Because you could say, well, it's suitable. Right? That that is for whatever reason, we we they we've met our criteria, but there's plenty of other funds that that do also. They're just not paying us. Right. You you you bring up you bring up a great point because, yes. When you walked into JPMorgan, you know, you'd expect to be sold to JPMorgan fund. Right? And, you know, most, most advisors did that. Okay? But because we had an option early on to, pick whatever fun families, we had selling arrangements with, I always went like American Funds because they are very low cost, and they had great track records, and they did very well over long periods of time. So I recommended American funds, and I don't think my manager at JPMorgan was too crazy about all my clients' money going into American funds, but they did, nevertheless. And the other point you bring up is that JPMorgan over time stopped offering, third party funds. So they got rid of all the fund families that that you had options for when I first started in two thousand five, two thousand six, two thousand seven, two thousand eight, you know, changed everything because now they had to be more company, you know, oriented and focused because they had just, you know, they had just we just been through the the financial crisis. So instead of expanding, the the choices for advisers to pick for their customers, they actually eliminated all the choices so that the only really choice you had was maybe two or three fun families and, and the the the fee based accounts. Right? Or or some very, very expensive, portfolio, managed accounts where you'd hire, you know, separately managed account where you would hire an individual manager, in addition to your fee. So now you're talking upwards of three percent plus of transaction fees. So I don't really have a problem with fees if there's performance after the fees. The problem is that, the fees were high and there was no performance on so, essentially, what you're doing is you're putting your money and you're actually a partner with the with the managers if they they can even outperform the fees, and many of them did not. Yeah. And that that's really the issue that I have with them over time. And, you know, they eliminated a lot of products, and they eliminated a lot of, a lot of choices for the advisers. And, you know, and and that's when, that's when we got into two thousand ten, eleven when they started, Chase Private Client. Let let's stop for a second. Let me let me just put some background on this time period to remind people what was happening. Because, you know, you talked about calling bank, clients that were typically very risk averse, and they were putting their money in CDs and how the the appeal of a CD is it's Right. It's guaranteed. But for that guarantee, as we know, there's a trade off between risk and reward. We also know that the, the the interest rate that a bank's gonna gonna, pay on a CD is highly correlated with the federal funds rate. Right? So in a when the federal funds, rate is high, then you'll typically see a much higher interest rate on CDs. And it'd be a an average client who is not sophisticated, when they see high interest rates when I'm gonna say high, I'm just gonna say five percent, for example. Like, that's right now, we consider that high, but, historically, that's not high. But but for for for entire my entire life in the business, because I was just getting into the business right right before the financial crisis. I was licensed in two thousand seven. So I was just getting in into this. And so I am I I am getting in right as interest rates are beginning to really fall. And so there's we talk about how difficult it is to predict the market, but there's one thing you can predict. And if if if it's clear interest rates are going down, it's easy to predict that CD rates are going down. It is, mister and miss client, This is what the federal funds with the with the feds tells us about interest rates, that they're easing and they're easing quickly. So if this continues, you know, we look at this. Over the last year, the federal funds rate has gone down this percentage. They're telling us that it's keep going. When you renew this in a year, it's not gonna be five percent, four percent, three percent, where this unspecifically client is gonna say, oh, the the bank's being good or the bank's being bad to me. Well, it's not the bank. They're really passing on what the Fed is doing. Right? They're gonna give you something, and then they're gonna keep a little bit from themselves. So during an environment like this, there is a tremendous amount of clients who the solution that worked for them before no longer works for them now. So they so it so it makes sense for them to be called into an office and say, hey. Let's let's talk about your goals. Let's talk about your plans for this money. Let's talk about what's happening in the market. And is is a CD still right for you? And it might be for plenty of them. But so so you're taking advantage of a time where it makes sense to talk to an adviser. It really makes sense. And and I I and I'm not saying that it never makes sense before. It's just that there's certain times that there's a there's it makes more sense for more people even to talk, even that even that conservative listener. So the the situation is not that they're being taken out of a CD and put it into something else because there will be clients, and it's very appropriate when you reconsider whether they're in a CD or not a considered different product. The issue is taking taking advantage of this situation and to pushing them in the products that, as you're describing, the bank makes a lot more money on these products versus these products. Exactly. This this this situation we're going into is a is a falling interest rate environment, which means a lot of potential changes in client accounts. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And so that that was the issue, and that was the, tactic that they wanted you to to do is they wanted you to to call clients up and say, you know, your CD is maturing and, you know, you have five percent for the last five years, but now the new rates are only, you know, two percent. There's nothing we could do about that. Would you like to come in and talk to us us about, you know, what you wanna do with this money longer term? Mhmm. Which which is there's nothing wrong with that. Okay. That's what you should do. Right? It's your job. Yes. Exactly. The problem is when you take when you when you take that customer and you bring them in, you know, and then, you don't discuss the fact that, my fee over the next five years is gonna be more than you made in your CD over the last five years. So and you're taking a whole bunch of risk now because you're going into an asset allocation that has, you know, unpredictable market swings. You're not going into just a Vanguard index fund. Right? You're going into very, very high priced, and high risk asset allocations. And, whether they say, you know, their growth or growth and income or or even just income, they all carry individual risks that are not really that that the clients don't really understand coming out of a CD and into, that type of product. Maybe they never invested in the market before, or maybe they have and didn't have a good experience, and that's why they're in CDs. But the bottom line is if you're gonna call them into the office to present them with a better idea than what they're doing based upon their, you know, their wants and their needs, then, you know, you really have to step up to the plate and bring them something that makes sense for them. And that's what I prided myself on doing, not just throwing them into a fee based account that had no track record, but putting them into something maybe they needed, you know, some life insurance at the time or, you know, or maybe they needed, a short term solution for that money. So they might go into, like, a floating rate fund where, you know, the rates go up as the rates go up. And as the rates go down, the rates go down. But, they have more options than just the fee based accounts. And because the whole program was around gathering assets under management to do as much as you can per monthly commissions, I really feel that at that point, before Chase private client came out, that we were failing our customers in doing the right thing for them. We rarely had meetings on, you know, doing the right thing and being a fiduciary. All the meetings were about how much have you made, who's the top dog. Right? Who who's who's going to Vegas this year on the trip. Right? Who's going to, you know, the the parties, this weekend that JPMorgan throws? And, yeah, it it was really a it was really an environment where you were encouraged to just put customers into, the thing that made the most amount of money for you and the firm, and kinda client came last. You know? And I had already been in the business for fifteen years. You know? I've had, ups and downs in my career, but I know the difference between right and wrong. And I wouldn't have been in the business for fifteen years if I decided that I wanted to just, you know, jump into pushing a product and not necessarily doing the right thing for for each individual customers. Because, you know, at the end of the day, you're you're seeing those customers every day. They're not just investment clients, they're banking clients. You know? So they're gonna come in, they're gonna say hi, they're gonna make a deposit, they're gonna make a withdrawal. You know? So you're gonna, you you know, you're gonna see these people every day. So, you know, you don't necessarily, want to have those relationships, you know, soured based upon the fact that you put that customer into something that might may or may not, you know, be the right thing for them. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I remember in my my first, first full quarter at at JPMorgan, I was there less than a year. Right? You understand why, Robert. But I remember my first full quarter, I got the what they call the stack rankings, and you can see, you know, the what we call annuitized business. So that that was existing business that's still paying a trail. And you can say new business that has been generated. And the interesting thing was is for new money flowing into the bank, in other words, convincing clients to take their accounts from somewhere else and bring them into the bank, I was in the top couple of people in the in the region. But then when it came to actual commission generated, commission and fees, all of just in in one bucket, you got paid, as you know, a percentage of all the fees and commissions that you generated. And I'm new to business. I'm fit I'm I'm learn I'm just drinking Kool Aid and learning by fire. And I remember so I called my my my manager, and I asked her. I said, hey. So, you know, you told me to focus on this, and, you know, I didn't pick apart the the the actual pay group, how I got paid on different things. I said, no. I'm at the top over here, but I'm still in the bottom quartile in in in this air in the area on actual compensation. How does how does that work? Well, you know, a lot of the advisers found a lot of clients that needed these products, and then you found a lot of people that happen to need these other products. And, you know, maybe next quarter, you'll find more people that need the first type of products that the other Right. You're finding. I'm like, wait. What? Like, I how is it that my branch has that's why then I go look at the other products that that she's talking about that that found people that needed these products. I'm like, well, they're they're paying seven and seven and a half percent of a upfront load that the the client doesn't see, rather than it's just that it's paid to the to the to to the, advisor. So I'm like, these these things are garbage. Who who needs this? These fees are exorbitant, and it's not disclosed to the client because it's coming out as a commission, not a fee. And those commissions come out you know, are paid by the company, not by the client. Right. What? I mean, yeah. They're paid by the client, and they just don't see it. Right? And so I I'm like, well, I don't understand what's happening here. So what I and the reason I point this out is it's not just the push of doing x product. It's also that the advisers are being pulled and pulled by I look at the stack rankings. I see where I sit. I know that I can think of couple of clients and if I make a different recommendation that, technically, I could have led it towards this towards this other outcome and recommended this other product, but I didn't because it well, I didn't believe it was in the in the client's best interest. Here's the thing that really just shocked me was I realized that either way, I was only recommending the best thing that was on the menu, and there was even better stuff. Like, I all all I the the best I could hope to do was to make the best recommendation that was on the menu. And so there's not only a push from the top of we wanna do more of this, there's also the pull of the way compensation for the advisors is structured. It's gonna pull you towards certain things eventually or not. Otherwise, you're gonna continue to be at the bottom of the stack rankings. If you're at the bottom of the stack rankings, you're worried about your job. So there's a a pull into these into into doing the correct types of business as well. Right. Yeah. And if, if, you recall, they were, you know, they didn't didn't really get a salary. And the salary is named later on after the states kind of forced them on JPMorgan. Yeah. But at the time, maybe you got a draw. Right? So they give you, you know, a draw is like an alone to you. Right? And then they take that loan back every month that's subtracted from your net commissions. Right? So you knew you had a couple thousand dollars or whatever it is you negotiated for your draw. But if you wanted to get over and above that draw every single month, you know, you had to look at ways to, you know, well, who's making the most amount of money? Who's the top dog making the most, every single month? It's the guy that puts customers and the products that, you know, the customers are charged the most, not necessarily the ones that are good for them. Now I remember the top, producer in my, in my district, he was, you know, one of the top in the country, and he was just doing all of these, separately managed accounts. You know, they were they were separately managed accounts for, like, another two and a half percent on top of the one point six percent. So it was like four percent, you know, every single month in, management fees. Now it and he was making all those fees, but, the performance of the, the portfolios were were were not good enough to make up for those fees. So he really didn't care what happened to the customer or their money. He, you know, he just want to be the top dog every month. I think that's where management comes in, and they praise that guy and not necessarily the guy that was doing the right thing for the customers. And he he gets a word on his desk at the end of the quarter, you know, that I was the top dog. And so if someone comes in his office and there's instant credibility, is the guy's one of the best guys at Chase. Yeah. Exactly. Because, you know, they think, well, that well, he must be doing the right thing by his clients when, you know, the whole the whole time, he's just doing the right thing for himself. And that's why he's got those awards and those little glass thingies that, you know, all over their desks and whatnot. And so, that really didn't, affect me that much, because, I really didn't care about rankings. I was always maybe in the top three or five in my district, and it was only because I did the right thing and I had repeat customers coming back to me. And, I remember at one point, I was wrecking a I would recommend in a, municipal bond fund. And, because, rates were going down, the fund was playing paying, you know, a really nice rate. You know, the the the fund itself, the principal of the fund went up by, like, thirty five percent within a year. So customers had municipal, municipal income, you know, plus, plus, you know, capital gain for that year. They were loving me. And I really didn't have to do that much more than that. And, you know, they kept coming back. And that's why I was, you know, a pretty decent producer over time. And that's why I think I probably drew the attention of the of the the the higher up managers because it was at the my manager said, why is this guy such a top producer And he's not doing, you know, what we want him to do. Like, what's what's he doing? And I was just doing the right thing, you know, and I'm just doing it good. And, there came a time, when I was recommending fixed annuities, two thousand eight, two thousand nine when rates were still, decent in, fixed annuities. And I was doing more fixed annuity switchovers than anybody in the entire firm, they called ten thirty five exchanges. So essentially essentially, what you did was you called up your you called up your fixed annuity, customers. And, at the time, a lot of them had holdover fixed annuities from when rates were low even before they were two percent or three percent. And now you could offer them a guaranteed minimum of three, three and a half percent and show them six, seven, eight percent without taking any more risk than they were taking before. And, that was just a very good business for me. I did about fifty million dollars in business just in those just in that area alone. And it was something that nobody else was really looking at because, you know, the process was kinda long. It took two or three months and, you know, a lot of people didn't wanna do it. And not only that, but the firm was, you know, focused around these these managed accounts. So I started making a lot of noise about all the fixed annuity business that I was doing. And, right away, they shut me down, and they told me to, you know, stop calling all these clients. And they handed over they said, well, what we're gonna do, Robert, is, we're going to call all of our insurance carriers, have them send us a list of all the annuities that were past the surrender charge period that we could, give to the advisers and their branches to help them, you know, solidify their relationships or reach out to them to get them to come in. So I was very happy to help the company, you know, help, help the customers. You know, they didn't really, tell me that I could do more business than I was doing. They kinda shut me down and says, well, thanks a lot for helping us out with this, but, you know, we got this from here. And that's when I that's when I realized that, okay, you know, now I've gotta try and find a different way to help my customers because because rates started going down again. Right? Yeah. And you you when you think about this, it's to put this in context for our listeners is, you know, this rates going down presents an opportunity. And opportunity, it it should immediately signal clients review your strategy, make sure what you're doing still makes sense for you. And so, you know, the overwhelming majority of of bank clients are doing one year CDs, and there's often a promotional rate for things like that as well. A lot of them don't even wanna do five year CDs, and often you don't get a better rate for doing five year CDs anyway. So Right. You'll tend to see a lot of those kind of, you know, three months, six months CDs because someone's just, hey. I need this for x. I know this I need this for taxes, but I wanna I wanna move it out of the savings account into a CD for six months because I can get paid more for six months to lock it up just for six months. So, in in knowing that interest rates are going down, the thing about a fixed annuity is they typically would run five, six, seven years, I think, sometimes more. But usually usually that kind of five to seven year range, but you would get a a guaranteed payout. So in a situation where, for example, you know, a a a CD was paying, you know, six percent, and now it's going down five and going down to four and and eventually almost zero for a CD. It made a lot of sense, and, you don't have to take my word for this. You can literally go research this and find out what CD rates were in the mid two thousands and the Fed funds rate where CDs went and to see that doing a fixed annuity for someone who was risk averse. Right. That there was a lot of reason to do a fixed annuity. Now I wanna say this, there's a lot of different types of annuities. So don't simplify what I said to annuities in just broadly because that's like saying cars. There's lots of different types of cars. Some of them are better for others. Some of them have better purposes than others. Some I would never recommend. Right. But fixed annuities had a lot of of of, a reason for risk averse clients to be considering them because if you look at a bank CD and it had a one year rate, the three year rate was lower. Why? Because the bank expected the rates to go down. Right? Because all they're doing is just pinning that CD rate to the federal funds rate. So, to me, this was the the probably the of my lifetime, the best time to buy fixed duty in my entire life, because rates were going down. At the same time, you know, with with the bank is that that's typically not a bad thing, just any any product to the bank, but, you know, you're moving out of the CD and into this. But if you were probably mixing that up and putting, you know, half of that money into these managed accounts or the unit investment trusts and things like that, that's we're very high commission. It wouldn't have been on their radar. Right? But when you're doing a large amount of business during probably the best time of my life to do fixed annuities, you're doing a lot of fixed annuities, that's, that that that causes an alarm to to go off. Right. Yeah. You know, we we've been talking about a lot of, products, you know, for the last, I guess, twenty five or thirty minutes. And, we haven't even gotten into, like, you know, the the the salacious and the and the juicy stuff. I don't know how Let's jump into juice, Robert. I I am in here. Let's just jump into a juice. Okay. Well, there was there was a lot of juice going down in Vegas. So, there's a lot of good stories that, came out of the Vegas trips. One of them was, you know, guys get drunk and they get silly. They get into fights. You know? And and these these JPMorgan advisers, you know, they all have these huge egos, you know. So you get two of them in an elevator, and, they get into, you know, a big, fistfight. And the next thing you know, they're throwing out a bunch of, JPMorgan advisers. That was one trip to Vegas. Another trip to Vegas was when I'm not gonna mention his name because he's I I think he's still a good guy, but he was caught with, sex workers up in his, room at one of the Vegas trips. And, yeah, somebody ratted him out, and he lost his job. And he was he was a regional manager, so he, you know, he was up there. And so those are, like, the couple of crazy things that went down and not including, you know, them taking a bunch of us to the strip clubs and, you know, paying for an entire night out, you know, at Vegas. And at the time, you know, it's pre two thousand seven, two thousand and eight, because because of the fixed annuities, I had made a top, the top producers list to go to Vegas in two thousand seven. And then after two thousand seven, two thousand eight, you know, because of the crisis and everything else, they just stopped the trips altogether. And, from from from there on in, the trips were to, like, you know, Disney World. You know? And, you know, so it's it's kinda funny to see how, you know, they went from this party type atmosphere to, oh, we better keep this, you know, under wraps now. So, that was kinda the stuff that happened, just prior to Chase private client where, kind of the next phase of my, journey at JPMorgan started. Right? And if you wanna go into that, you know, or you wanna ask me any more questions prior to two thousand eight, nine, You know, we had a couple advisors that, stole money from customers. It was really sad. This woman, had invested four thousand dollars in what she thought was an annuity. And one of the advisors just took the money from the cashier at the teller and put it in his pocket. And, you know, he got caught. And, yeah, they fired him, and they brought charges up on him. Then there was this other guy that worked in Midtown. He had a bad gambling habit, and he, took about twenty five million dollars from five or six clients and ran the transactions through the tellers, into a trading company of his. So he just took the customer's money, put it into his own bank account where he was trading, and he had sent out some fake, I think his name was Michael Oppenheimer or Michael Oppenheimer or something. And, yeah, this went on for years, And the only way he got caught was when, one of his, clients, went to the FBI. And so, those are some of the just kind of the interesting things that happened, you know, in the in the little, cocoon of, you know, midtown downtown New York City where kind of, you know, anything goes. You know, and and it really did. And, so, you know, the experiences were were kind of interesting. But, you know, I just try to, you know, stay stay in my lane and, you know, do the right thing for customers. And hopefully, JPMorgan won't be asking me to, you know, do too much to, you know, just push their products without feeling like, I wasn't a team player or something like that. Because I I had a lot of, I had a lot of letters and accolades from my clients and, you know, they were compelled to write letters to my managers telling them about, you know, what a good job I was doing and things like that. And I really appreciated the recognition a lot more than making the extra bit of money that, you know, the guy down the block was making maybe. But, in two thousand and ten, I believe there was a pilot program that went out for a a new platform that JPMorgan was gonna use called Chase Private Client. And Chase Private Client was, where they took a branch. They took, you know, the the, the blueprint of a branch, and they cut off a certain part of it to create a private area where customers that were considered mass affluent, more than a hundred thousand dollars in net worth, could, sit down with a newly created private client adviser. The whole platform was newly created. So now you went from a JPMorgan financial advisor to a Chase private client advisor and gave customers the exclusive access to the private bank managed accounts. K? So that was the whole hook, was that you're gonna get exclusive access to the same type of investment accounts that, you know, our highest net worth customers, get. And that was not true right off the bat. They created these private bank accounts, labeled them private bank, and I and I knew they weren't private bank. They were just using the name because I actually met the chief investment officer of the private bank and he told me so. So these were kind of strategies that were, cobbled together, to, push to the retail, bank customers, to try to make it appear that they were getting something that they weren't really getting. So the company put a billion dollars behind this idea. And, one of the pilot branches was my branch on Park Avenue, and they promoted another advisor over me to be the Chase private client adviser, because they were doing more, you know, house accounts and fee based accounts than I was. And so I was I was happy to not be involved with Chase private client to begin with because I kinda saw through all of the fluff that they were trying to make it sound like. And I knew that if you were going to push private bank accounts on retail customers, then they weren't, and they didn't at the time, talk about any of the fees or any of the risks associated with them. They were just private bank. And so because they used the word private to to make it sound like we can't even tell you what you're investing in, that's what kinda really, you know, raised the the hairs on the back of my head. So it would not What what what is the model involved with? So How do how do they get to so let's take a step back. So Yeah. What I hear you saying is that in the branches, they created a new program that was marketed as private bank because they wanted it to sound like a bigger deal than it was. And for those those unfamiliar at home, there's, products that a bank will have for, all customers. And then there's, products that they'll have for their super elite customers, and everyone's gotta have a bank. So the the billionaires have banks as well. Multimillionaires have banks. And so what they basically did is, you know, they said, okay. For this mass class of of clients that have at least a hundred thousand dollars, which, by the way, it it's it's a lot of money to a lot of people, but to a bank, a hundred thousand dollars might as well be a dollar when it comes to investable assets. That's a that's a very low threshold for investable assets. So you're taking something, to a group of people that has never had a lot of options with investing in saying we're giving you elite options that our ultra wealthy clients have. Right. And first off, you can't you can't give them the same options. Literally can't. I won't get into all those details today. Well, you have to be an accredited investor. Exactly. We're not accredited. Yes. That's a And accredited is a legal definition. People say, well, I'm accredited. Well, are you guys you have to meet these certain checkpoints? And so people that billion dollar net worth, two hundred and fifty thousand dollar liquid. Yeah. And they were just they were just only liquid for a hundred thousand. Yeah. That could have been all the money in the world they had, really. Yeah. So so you're you're taking this this group of people that are less sophisticated, less experienced in investing by definition, and then you're exposing them to to this to this new, supposedly private, investment vehicle. But why was it, you know, not disclosing fees and, and and risks and things like that? How are they able to get away with that? That's what I don't understand. Yeah. Well well, so far, they've gotten away with it. But, and it's been a long time since I let the regulators know about it. But, essentially, the way I found out about it was when I went for my, private client advisor training in, midtown Manhattan. And that's where they, taught you about all the products that they were gonna launch and had, you know, how you should go about, pitching them to customers. You know, we broke off into little groups and somebody played a customer and somebody played the adviser and, you know, it was more like a sale. How are you gonna sell this and how do you handle objections and things like that? And wasn't necessarily about, the depth of the research that went into the product itself. It was just about promoting the JPMorgan private bank name Yeah. And then convincing customers that, you know, be it was it was a good fit thing for them. And then at the end of the week long, training, the trainers said to us, okay, at this point, everybody turn off your tape recorders. And I'm, you know, if you ever have anything you're recording, please please turn it off. And I was like, well, what's it gonna say? You know? So I wasn't really tape recording at the time. I never had the unction to record a meeting, but now I kinda wonder if I should be. Right. Right. And I saw a couple guys that were recording throughout the course of the meeting just to kinda, I guess, refresh their memories or have some notes or whatever. So he saw some guys recording. He told them to shut their recordings off. He said the best thing about being a Chase private client adviser is that we are under the regulation of the OCC, not the SEC. So I said, what do you you know, I just what does that mean? He said, well, the SEC, they're the ones that regulate investments. And I was like, well, aren't these investments? They said, yes. We're able to get the OCC, which is what regulates banks, right, and some bank managed investments, that they should regulate Chase private client because these are bank managed investments. Okay? And you have to draw a distinction between a bank managed investment and an investment that the SEC, doesn't have to regulate. Bank managed investment is when the bank is actually managing the money, buying the stocks and the bonds, and controlling the underlying, assets inside the bank managed accounts. In these private bank investments, they were merely mutual funds, ninety percent mutual funds that was under the purview of the SEC because you have to have things like disclosure Mhmm. Of the fees and the risks, and prospectuses, need to be sent out. So JPMorgan, don't know how they were able to do it, but they were able to choose their regulator, which served them very well because over the course of when I became a private client advisor and when I realized the whole scheme and, reported it to the SEC, they just kept going with it, you know, and they they just kept they just kept running with the ball. And, you know, at the end of the day, I I knew what they were doing was wrong. They even used performance reports for these, investment accounts, that were different internally and externally. So in here's what I mean. So the internal, client only or the internal use only performance reports had the new one point six percent fee when it was launched to the retail investor. But the performance reports they were using were still based upon, one percent that the ultra wealthy were supposedly, paying. So, right there, I had an internal report and an external report fees. And for a long time, they just, you know, they just, used a a part of the disclosure, that says, well, the the one percent fee is still one percent even after it's being presented to the retail clients at one point six percent because in a separate document, the fee disclosure, it showed the one point six percent. So even though you're showing the performance report that says one percent, because they had a separate forum that said, you know, one point six percent for the fee, very few clients are gonna put two and two together and say, wait a minute. If I'm paying one point six percent, let's go back to the performance report because that only showed one percent. And if it is only one if it is one point six percent, that that isn't my, return less than what you're telling me? And nobody's gonna say that, but that's what I had discovered. And I was like, nope. Not not gonna do it, you know. And, so I tried I tried telling my back office about it, and they said, yeah, they weren't gonna change it. And, that was when I contacted an attorney. So the for our for our listeners, you know, I I'm not as familiar with the OCC rules as a registered investment adviser. We work with the SCC. And what's what I mean, I'm not an attorney either, but I'll give you my my recognition of of the laws I left. But do think I have some bit of expertise here. But so what is customary is that if it's normal to have a fee schedule that is, that is graduated. And so that with more money invested, that the fee you go to pay goes down. But when you present performance, it's customary and expected. I'm saying customary. It's a light term, but it's expected that you put the highest possible fee on there. Because the SEC wants to see that it's basically, they want you presenting the worst case scenario, not the best case scenario. So Right. If you're showing something to a client that has a lot of money, you're gonna say, hey. This is net of one point six percent. You're actually paying point seven five percent or whatever it is. So it would you're you're you're verbally saying, hey. It would have been better than this. That's okay. But because you've disclosed the worst case scenario. Because you understand that you you want the you don't want the client to the bottom bottom line is what you're saying is they're gonna look at the performance. They're gonna look at the performance and, look at that what they see, and that's what they expect, and they're not going back and looking at all these other other little details later. Yeah. So when you buy a mutual fund, there's a performance report. The performance report shows, what your return would be if you paid no, commissions at all. That would be your net asset value. And many times, you'll get a break point or discount at certain levels, usually a million dollars or more, where you don't have to pay any commissions at all for a mutual fund. The other, net performance of the mutual fund has to be the maximum advisory portfolio, fee charged. So for the customers who have the first, slot of money up until the first break point, those folks, which are most of the people that walk into a branch up to two hundred and fifty thousand, they're gonna be paying one point six percent. They're not gonna be paying one percent. So every single person that walked in to a branch and bought one of these private bank accounts thinking they were paying one percent or were gonna get a return of three percent. Based upon the performance reports, we're simply not gonna get that. And that was just it was misleading. It's fraud. And we brought the whole thing up to, to the SEC. And, remarkably, within three days of, my report to the SEC, I was I was fired. And I was fired for something that happened the prior year, where I was I was arrested in a, in a, a dispute with another driver, but the charges were dropped, and I never had any charges against me. And so that's not that's not something that has to be disclosed. And so I didn't disclose it because there's certain things that you have to disclose and certain things you don't have to disclose. An arrest without a charge does not need to be disclosed because half of the people in the country that get arrested are never charged. So, the bank said that because, because of their because I was a bank employee, right, because I was now pushing these bank management investments, that I had, a responsibility to disclose it to the bank. But the regulators, the SEC and FINRA, they consider me an employee of JPMorgan securities with a broker, John. Because anytime you're licensed, you have to be an employee of the broker dealer because they're the ones that are supposed to be regulating you, supervising you, making sure you're doing all these compliance, meetings that make sure that you have a continuing education of compliance about the laws regulating FINRA and the SEC. Which is crazy because when you go into a Chase Bank and there's an adviser there, he is gonna be in a different office or they're gonna try to kinda harshen him off some way. And when you go in, you're gonna see disclosures either on a sticker on the window or a, a little placard on his desk that says he is an employee of something else, you know, of of big mortgage securities or whatever whatever the name of it is. So just because you're in the bank building, they're putting these disclosures out saying this is not a bank employee. This is a bank, this is employee of a of an investment company that's affiliated with the bank. Right? But it's not a bank employee, and this is this is very difficult, for people that don't come from this to to to wrap their head around sometimes is, well, use the bank. Would not be at the bank, but he's technically not employed by the bank. But now what you're basically saying is since they're calling these things bank products in order to, is a them. Yes. And as a means of choosing their regulator, they're saying, hey. Who's who's whose laws do we think? Whose rules do we think are allow us to get to get away with this or whatever in your words, or I'm not using your words. That's who we wanna be regular. So using that to then say you're an employee of the bank, but you're you're technically not an employee of the bank. It's it's not a technical. Like, there's disclosure on your door that says you're not a bank employee. Right. Yeah. That that's interesting because I I did have, some memos that I had saved, you know, that said, you know, you employee of JPMorgan Securities. And, throughout my, my retaliation complaint that went through OSHA, I repeatedly said, look. Here's the paper that they gave me that said I'm not supposed to tell customers I'm a bank employee. I'm an employee of JPMorgan Securities and subject to their rules. And their whole argument was that, no. He was and the interesting thing is that the bank started paying us for commissions after Chase Private Client was launched. Okay? So there's a I don't know what's going on with that, but the bank is not allowed to pay commissions to, registered investment advisers because the bank is not on the, the the CRD of the broker dealer. Now they could have the option of doing that. The bank could have said JPMorgan Chase Bank NA could have added themselves to the CRD of JPMorgan securities, and there would have been no problem. But they just they let they're not they wanted the separation. So they could say Manila's a bank employee, subject to the the bank rules that says you gotta report any rest, no matter if there's charges or not, which incidentally I proved was, violating my civil rights at the time because New York City had just, they had just, finalized a law that said that employers are not allowed to ask prospective employees or existing employees about arrests that did not, involve a charge or an arrest, that did not, that would not impede with the, role that they were applying for. Right? Yeah. So clearly, they they they weren't allowed to even ask that question, which they did on their annual compliance certification. You've blown the whistle, and three days later, you're fired. And the circuit just as just kindly. The circumstances of your being let go are are are very complicated and do not and and look good for you, you know, not not so good for the banks. So there's a lot of reason to believe that, that this is motivated by you blowing the whistle. And and what was it that ultimately you know, you've you've kinda mentioned a couple of things and, let's kinda review. You know, first off, there was the fees. There was the conflicts of interest that weren't disclosed. There was the, conflict of interest between the the the the funds that are even available and why they're being put on there. There's the putting there's the, let's say, moral, type things, that are happening with with brokers and things. Now I will put some caveat in that as, you know, I I I'll play the devil's advocate on that one, which is, you know, on one hand, some of these things you're talking about is why doesn't the bank have better checks and balances to catch a lot of those things, the things that were happening for years. So that's a concern, especially from a bank that size and not that powerful. On the other hand, there were some situations where it's, hey. When you oh, you have thousands of employees, eventually, someone's gonna do something stupid, and you fire them. And as long as you fire them and you punish them and you say that's not welcome here, you know, you can't necessarily fault the bank for the fact that someone, you know, did something they shouldn't have done with their corporate card and they got fired over it. Okay. Fair enough. So, you know, I wanna be able to give it that. And then, of course, now we've got to the point of, this, this private client offering that's not disclosing fees properly, that sort of thing. Is that what ultimately questions. Number one is Yep. Does that does that summarize all the reasons that you that you blew the whistle, or were there others? That's we'll start with that that question. Well, no. That that was really the reason that I blew the whistle is because, you know, they they were, pushing me more and more to have my clients, sell out of good investments and go into bad investments. Yeah. And the good investments I had were the steady investments that the clients were making money from, the municipal bonds, the fixed annuities, life insurance, and, you know, And before I should step back for two seconds because before Chase private client, there was actual senior, financial adviser role that, I I, qualified for, and I was in that role before I even became a private client adviser. So I had earned that role through things like doing the right thing by the clients and a certain minimum production and so forth and bringing in assets assets under management. So I was already in a senior role, and I already had a series twenty four, which is principal license. So I knew about compliance and I knew about products. And, when I got to the point where, it was just straight up, they were asking me to push this product using the performance report that I knew was wrong. Yeah. That was what, you know, pushed me over the edge. And I said, you know what? I just can't I can't work here anymore because they're forcing me to do something that's not right, and, I'm not gonna do it. And when I had a meeting with my manager, my manager said that, with the trajectory that I was going on, I wasn't gonna be in the business much longer. And I actually got him on, tape saying that because I knew he was gonna say something, during our, midyear review. And so I recorded a portion of that, meeting when I knew he was gonna get more, aggressive towards pushing me into doing the wrong thing for my clients. And I had presented that evidence at my OSHA appeal, and it was it was rejected by the, by the judge. And, both cases, the original investigation for my retaliation and the appeal, you know, is is is a is probably another podcast in itself because, that's when we start getting into the bribery and the, the things that were happening on the the the regular the regulator's level, that way that was later discovered when I launched a, an IG report into OSHA and what happened there. What is the what is the IG report? The inspector general for OSHA. So every every, government agency has inspector generals, and they're the ones that police the the regulators. And so when I called into question a donation that JPMorgan made of five hundred thousand dollars to, the area where the OSHA supervisor, closed my account, they went down there and they questioned that. And they said, did you not know that JPMorgan made a five hundred thousand dollar donation to your hometown three weeks before you closed mister Manila's case? And, he said he said he didn't know. He said he had no idea. And meanwhile, it's a very small town. It's Buffalo, New York. It was a big deal. They had the big check thing and it was in all the local papers. So there's no way he could not have known that JPMorgan gave five hundred thousand dollars to his hometown before he closed my case with them, three weeks later. And interestingly enough is a couple weeks after that, he was retired. And so that's just one of the things that I experienced after, my retaliation claim was going on. Because my investigator was she knew what was going on. She was very good at her job, even though she had no experience at all, investigating, you know, Dodd Frank and Sox. And that's probably why they put her on the case, because OSHA is very ill equipped and very ill trained to handle Dodd Frank and Sox cases, but that's where you have to go if you had have a Dodd Frank or Sox case. How about isn't OSHA the same people that, you know, go to a factory and make sure that they're physically well, I think OSHA, I think physical safety. I don't think about securities and Right. Finding. Right. But when Dodd Frank was passed, SOX was passed, they gave that responsibility to OSHA even though they had no experience, with securities laws or Wall Street or maybe my investigator said, you know, we don't really know. My manager doesn't really know much about, the laws, so or Wall Street. So can you help us through it? You know? So I basically had to explain to them, you know, what they were doing about the two separate regulators and, you know. And so when it was going my way and it looked like I was gonna get a favorable decision, my case was transferred from Teaneck, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York, which had nothing to do with the case the whole time. And the supervisor in Buffalo, New York was the one that closed my case after JP Morgan made a five hundred thousand dollars donation to his hometown for jobs, three weeks earlier. And when I brought it up to the IG, he, you know, he he did a he did a thorough investigation as as well. The inspector general came to my house, took all my information and evidence, and, you know, he he determined and, he asked them whether or not, if, whether or not they would have continued with the case if JPMorgan was upfront with all the documentations that were being requested from them, because, there was a bunch of, things that, that the investigator was trying to wrap up to close down her case, information she had requested during the course of her investigation that was never handed over, to her. And, even though these issues were still pending and the the evidence was still pending, JPMorgan was supposed to hand over, this, Buffalo OSHA supervisor came in and just closed the case after, you know, looking at it for maybe a couple of hours. So the whole thing was was shady. And if you know OSHA, you know, they they find very few people have merit, to their claims. I think it's, like, three to five percent of any of OSHA claims are determined to have merit. So it's a very industry, you know, friendly, government agency. And, you know, my investigator, she tried to do the right thing, and she was just she was overruled. And, then I took it to appeal. I got a very good attorney. We took it to appeal. But then again, it's still OSHA, but it's administrative, law judge. And, it because this was happening throughout COVID, the the trial just kept push kept getting pushed back and back and back. And it was almost two years before we could get a trial date, and we had to do it all by by remote. And, you know, by the looks of things, it appeared as though we were gonna get a favorable ruling. And then, she took like six months to make her decision, which was way past, you know, any other similar claim. And she came back. She totally flipped on what she said. Originally, when we when we started the case was that she wasn't gonna use any information from the prior case to make her decisions. And, that's what she was that's what she was, directed to do because, when you start an appeal, the appeal is supposed to start a trial as not looking at the previous cases. It's supposed to be, started as a new. So what she did was she went back into the original case and, sided with JPMorgan's attorneys, straw man argument, was was, was that, I was a bank employee, and she went with that. And, you know, because she didn't have that much experience either, she had to go based upon what what JPMorgan was saying, was that I was a bank employee, even though we had documentation that I clearly was not. It's it's amazing to me. I think this is the thing that I, have impressed upon students multiple times and folks that I have mentored is when it comes to the law, I hear so many people saying things like, yeah. But that's illegal. Yeah. You'd be yeah. But you could take them to court. That that's illegal. That's not. I hear this is the is the defense. And having been, so I've I've I've been a consultant to advisers for years. I've also done a couple of turnaround situations. One firm that I took over to turnaround was in the middle of four lawsuits when they hired me to help them get through all this stuff. And, so I've I've been in depositions. I've been in the courtroom. I've been in front of these things and and and trying to help multiple parties sort out a mess. And what I found, and I was part of those, were were during COVID. So I saw the mess of of the legal system during COVID. Saw a judge that just didn't want to deal with Zoom and online and just basically kicked everything out because he didn't he was planning on COVID lasting for a couple of weeks. And so it was let's give him a couple of weeks, and then it was Right. Then then his docket just got full and full because he wouldn't do anything. And so we we we forget that the legal system is full of, number one, humans, and humans make these errors of, like, this judge refused to do to see anyone, and all of a sudden, he's got this huge pile up, and so now he's just trying to churn through everything very quickly. And we forget that, you know, there's a difference in something being, against the law and something being enforceable. And we forget that there's a lot of friction when it comes to, you know, who is presiding over something, who has authority, what else is on their docket, what are their you know? And, of course, we we besides even just the, just the, what I'm gonna say, crooked things that can happen with, you know, buyouts and, you know, donations and things like that that could somehow maneuver. We're dealing with people, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong in the legal system. But and so for us to trust that, well, that's that's legal. That's that's not right. It doesn't necessarily matter. It's not about it it's about who's in front of you. It's about what's on their plate. It's about what their expertise is. It's about who they have relationships with. It's about who, who could pay for justice. You know? Right. The you you you get the justice that you can pay for. That that's that's a really good point because, you know, when we, originally filed the retaliation claim, we had all the evidence, we presented it to them, and, we you know, as any attorney would do, he said, why don't we see if we can make a settlement so we don't have to go through all this. Right? So we offered to to make a settlement, you know, at a at a an amount that we were both, you know, comfortable with based upon, you know, a lot of things, you know, back pay, front pay, damages, and so forth. And, and they totally rejected it throughout the entire now most most places, they'll they'll consider it at least. Right? But they totally rejected, our settlement offers throughout the entire three year process because if they would have settled with us on the retaliation, that would have set a precedent for the SEC to go ahead with their fine based upon my whistleblower claim to the SEC. So they had to defend the retaliation at all costs. And, I estimate they spent must have spent at least several million dollars defending themselves against this claim that I was making against them about the illegal firing that, you know, we would have accepted, you know, a lot less. Yeah. That that it is if you can outspend someone, it is very difficult to beat somebody that that can outspend you. You know, I've I've had this situation happen with, with with with the business dealing and meet with multiple attorneys and they're like, oh, you've got this is this is you're right. A hundred percent right. But the cost versus the benefit is gonna be your you win, and you're gonna be trying to just get back to fee. By the time you win x and then you've got fees of double that, and you're gonna get you're you're gonna lose. You can you're gonna get on paper losing money. Well, that's that's true in many cases. But but in my cases in my case, specifically, I was able to get an attorney to take my case on consignment. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I didn't pay any legal fees, but, you know, and and the reason he took it on consignment is because you really saw that this was a serious rock solid case. And my attorney what to do. I I think that's something else I I put in front of listeners is, you know, what what that means is you're taking attorney is taking your case saying, I believe I will take a percentage of the winnings. Right. You're not gonna pay me because I believe we're gonna win this, and so I'm gonna make more money by taking a percentage of the winnings than I will about taking your fees. So don't worry about paying me. I'll take a percentage of the winning. So it's it's favorable for the person, making the law suit is, okay. I won't make as much of the money of the of of of of winning the lawsuit, but there's no risk out of pocket. Right. And and I really had no choice because at this point, you know, I I had gone through my savings idea how much money I needed to rack up, of course. Yeah. I I knew it was something I I couldn't afford because charges, like, eight hundred fifty dollars an hour, and it's not some not the you know, at the time, I after I was terminated, I I got another job at another, insurance company, but I was never licensed there because JPMorgan wouldn't let my, they wouldn't give me a good recommendation to the new firm, in order for them to license me. So I lost my securities license. I was unable to get another job in the industry. I had gone through savings and, my pension and, had to start working odd jobs just to survive. At the same time, I was, you know, fighting this lawsuit that was taking a lot of my time as well. So, you know, I've I've been through a lot and, I've kinda reinvented myself on LinkedIn as you've seen. And, I still have, a pending, claim that may or may not, be, awarded based upon the OCC's fine. You can file for a related action. So that's still pending. We'll have to see, but I I don't really have that much confidence in it. Robert, what are your what are your main takeaways as far as, you know if I'm I'm a retail client, and I'm dealing with a big bank like JPMorgan. What are the what are the the the main pain points or main problems for a that a retail not advisory, retail client should take into consideration. And this is, one of the main things is, hey. This is what I learned, and this is what you should keep in mind, whether it be about their how they do business or their the things they're most interested in. What what are those main things? Well, the the things that I've seen, at the bank is that, customers come in. If you get them to come in and sit down with an adviser, the customers don't ask enough questions. The customers don't ask enough questions about fees. They don't ask enough questions about risks. They, are basically in a position where, okay. I'm sitting across from you. I'm at JPMorgan Bank. You're a customer. You know nothing. I know everything. I'm gonna tell you what you need to to to buy, instead of me listening to you to understand what what, what products would be appropriate for you. So I think if clients are gonna get a takeaway, if any clients watch this podcast, hopefully, they're gonna say to themselves, I've gotta ask my adviser more questions. And if I go in, I meet an adviser for the first time, I've gotta develop a questionnaire, because I'm putting my hard money at work. And I can't just trust this person because as much as I like them, you know, I've seen them around at the bank and they're always smiling, get me to come in and talk to them. That's all good. But at the end of the day, you know, business is business. And if you're gonna put your hard earned money with someone you don't know or or or barely know, you have to come up with a bunch of questions that are gonna satisfy you so that at the end of the day, you're comfortable with the fees and the risks that you understand, before you get into something and not after. Yeah. And I I think that, you know, sometimes I'll even say, even if you know the questions that you want to ask, that doesn't mean that the adviser is is necessarily giving the best answer to that question. It doesn't even mean that they necessarily understand it themselves. One of the things that surprised me in being this business about almost twenty years and having worked in several ways of just starting out at, you know, the bank and the warehouse and, working for a broker dealer, working for it, and now in the registered investment adviser space, owing all clients a fiduciary duty, is I'm surprised at how many advisers don't know that much about the other channels. Those the way other ways of giving advice and how different a bank relationship is than a independent RIA relationship and the legal obligations that are involved. Whereas a client just says, well, I went to this adviser, then I went to this adviser. And they just they're both advisers on the client's mind, but they're doing different business. They're they're compensated in different ways. They may be fundamentally giving advice, but is the advice conflicted? And does the adviser even understand how they are different? And, also, you know, like I said before, you know, there is overt advisers do this. Then there's also that kind of covert pulling advisors in a direction that you want. And so it when I was, brand new in the industry, you know, couple months into getting licensed and working at JPMorgan, which I always thought was kinda funny that I was a vice president of investments, you know, a month after getting a license. Everybody was a vice president. Everybody was a vice president. Everybody was a vice president. You're a vice president. You're a vice president. You're a vice president. Is is that you're drinking the Kool Aid, and so you're you can believe that you're doing the best for your clients because you don't know what else is out there. You really don't know the other options. And, you know, you're not an attorney. You know what your sales manager tells you, but and you know what the wholesalers tell you, the representatives from these outside fronts? Because this is the thing is people don't realize this that that needs to be heard is you hear a couple of times from some head of sales, but the your god to you is your sales manager. That's who's checking in on you, that's who's talking about numbers, that's who's talking about products, and then you've got wholesalers. Wholesalers are the people that that represent these companies that JPMorgan Chase is doing business with, and they're compensated to convince you to use their products instead of somebody else. So, you know, you in your mind, this is the thing is someone can say, well, my adviser's a good guy. He's I know he does the best he can. And I'd say, man, I as a new adviser at JPMorgan drinking the Kool Aid and thinking, I'm working for a big Wall Street bank. I'm I'm doing great. I've made it. This is everybody who JPMorgan is. I've got a job here, and these guys are the best. I'm gonna do what they say. Right. So I'm just drinking the Kool Aid as a kid, and I am doing my best out of the menu that they gave me. Right. I'm making the best. I go I went home and I slept fine because I was doing the best that the that the best told me to do. It wasn't until I'm getting into this, but hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You know? And then you start realizing there's this whole other way of doing business outside the bank that is, there's no such thing as doing business completely free of conflict of interest, obviously, but reducing conflicts of interest so dramatically that they're manageable and and disposable. Right. It is it is something that I think that, you know, I agree. Get get your list of questions ready, but also keep that in mind is it's not just the questions. Is can your advisor even answer them? And is this model is this model for doing business right for you? Because the model for doing business is different than other models for doing business. And is that conflicted model, heavily conflicted model between this type of firm and this type of firm and this type of firm. We're doing this employee and all of these types of fees and hidden fees and transaction fees that is that is that right for you to begin with? Because he can answer all the questions you you ask the best ability, and you're still without a lot of information. Yeah. Well well, one thing that, that I that I realized is that when I started in the business in JPMorgan, they said they were only hiring seasoned, professionals, people that had been licensed at least five years. Okay? So that was me. I had plenty of experience and I came in there And they they saw me working hard, and they saw me making money. And then when they, move to this, you know, we don't need it you know, we don't need advisers anymore. We need asset gatherers. You know, we need robots to push these products. You know, they started hiring kids out of college. You know? Hey. Go get your series seven and come here. And, you know, they'd be advisors, you know, on the same level as me, vice presidents. Right? Then they'd also take bankers, bankers who were bankers for, you know, a couple of months. Hey. Go get your series seven license, and, you know, you can you can be an adviser too. So they kind of needed if they were gonna put all this money behind, a new platform, they needed folks to help push the products. And that's when they, started, you know, taking anybody, to be a financial adviser. And, you know, those financial advisers, they didn't know, the difference between, you know, what was good and what was not good for a customer. And, but after you like you said, like, you were there for a while, you start to pick up on things, you know, and that don't sound sound right to you. You know, and and everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. And when you get to a point, you know, working at JP Morgan that you realize, you know, maybe some of these things are not necessarily in in the best interest of my clients. But you know what? I got a good job here, and I, I gotta just drink the Kool Aid and play ball and, you know, hit my widgets, and everybody's gonna be happy. You know, and I and I did that, you know, to the point where I couldn't anymore. And you learn that there are people that are doing things worse than you are? Yeah. And and and so, you know, you end up deciding who to compare yourself to Right. Which is the folks that in your mind are even worse. And so you're you're you you can still, get yourself a position where you're thinking your of yourself as a good guy for for whatever reason because you're you're you're in you choose your context for comparison. Right. And you compare yourself to the other bank, and you're beating them in this way, but not this way, but we're gonna talk about this way. So we're probably getting towards the end here. Is there anything else that we that we need to, we need to hit now home or anything else that comes to mind? Sure. I mean, you know, if you if you want all the all the details, you know, you can get my book on Amazon, dot com. I was actually chosen, by Amazon, for their for beta test that they're running on their new Amazon Audible. So, it's, it you know, it's not it's not a it's a computer generated voice, instead of a person, but it because of the advances in AI, the the the voice sounds, you know, completely fluid. And that's now available on Amazon for free. If you wanna check out the book, maybe I think you gotta maybe sign up for a club or something. It's not, very expensive. So yeah. So go out and, and get the book. And, the story is not over. And so, you know, I I might do, I might do a part two soon, if some things happen in the next couple of months. So stay tuned for that. Follow me on LinkedIn if you like what I'm posting. And, you know, I appreciate you, giving me this opportunity to, to tell my story. Thank you. Well, it's fabulous to have you today, Robert. You are, yes. It's an untamed ethos here coming in and, battling the big guy, battling the big bank, and and, in in a sense, doing God's work by by shining some light on some darkness out there in the industry. So hope this thing works out for you, Robert. Again, great. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you.