Futures-industry regulators missed multiple possible warning signs over the years about major problems at Peregrine Financial Group Inc., including several raised by their own investigators, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The enforcement actions filed against the brokerage by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and National Futures Association on Monday—after its founder Russell Wasendorf Sr. attempted suicide amid $215 million in allegedly missing customer funds—follow four previous actions by regulators against the company since 1996. Previous allegations included inaccurate accounting, insufficient capital and problems with segregating customer money, documents show. The failure by regulators to detect allegedly falsified bank statements at Peregrine for at least two years has again raised questions about their ability to protect customers of futures brokerages.
