A registered municipal advisor and its owner have been charged with defrauding a south Texas school district in connection with three municipal bond offerings. Through misrepresentation, Mario Hinojosa and his wholly owned- municipal advisor, Barcelona Strategies LLC failed to disclose his financial interest in the school district’s offerings.
Hinojosa and Barcelona fraudulently earned hundreds and thousands of dollars in advisory fees. The article below tells us exactly how deceptive and manipulative acts such as these happen. School districts are even at -risk.
SEC Levies Fraud Charges Against Texas-Based Municipal Advisor, Owner for Lying to School District
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced it charged a registered municipal advisor and its owner with defrauding a south Texas school district in connection with multiple municipal bond offerings.
The SEC’s order instituting proceedings found that in connection with three municipal bond offerings between January 2013 and December 2014, Mario Hinojosa and his wholly-owned municipal advisor, Barcelona Strategies LLC, misrepresented their municipal advisory experience and failed to disclose conflicts of interests to their client, a local school district in South Texas. While working as a paralegal, Hinojosa set up Barcelona, registered it as an SEC municipal advisor, drafted a marketing brochure about the firm, and circulated the brochure to the school district and other municipalities. The brochure created the misleading impression that Hinojosa and Barcelona had served as a municipal advisor on numerous municipal bond issuances and failed to disclose that Hinojosa had a financial interest in the school district’s offerings. By virtue of their misrepresentations and omissions, Barcelona and Hinojosa improperly earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in municipal advisory fees. Read the full article here.
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