Former William Tatro Clients Allege Unsuitable Investments

Rochester, NYWhen clients make allegations of inappropriate investments, such as the allegations against William Tatro, it can be easy to dismiss the complaints as being made by disgruntled former Bill Tatro and Eagle Steward clients. But behind some allegations are claims of large sums of money being lost in unsuitable investments and finances being devastated as a result.

Bolstering the complaints against Tatro is that his official record reflects more than $3 million paid to his customers in settlements, according to one attorney. Among the allegations are that Tatro chose investments for his clients that were unsuitable and inappropriate based on their financial situation and risk tolerance. These investments typically generated high commission and were illiquid, with a higher degree of risk than the clients would have accepted, had they been made aware of the risky nature of the investments.

Furthermore, Tatro is alleged to have sold the same investments to a wide variety of clients, regardless of their actual investing needs. Among those investments were Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and inverse and leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The ETFs are risky enough that they are considered highly unsuitable for ordinary investors.

One such investor was a widow in her 60s, whose husband reportedly left her almost $2 million when he died approximately 10 years ago. She spoke with an attorney after learning that not only did she owe the IRS money, but there was no money left to pay the IRS with. Part of the problem was that what was left of her investment—only a small portion of what she initially had—was put in REITs that could not easily be drawn on to pay her living expenses. Most of the rest of her investments were gone. The widow was forced to take work at a retail outlet to pay off her creditors, despite having had a sizable amount of money to invest initially.

After going through her finances, the widow and her attorney allegedly discovered that a large portion of her money was lost in investments that were unsuitable for a woman with no risk tolerance and who needed her investments to pay for living expenses.

Arbitration claims have been filed against Tatro, alleging he failed to properly invest clients' assets in a suitable manner and further alleging that his primary goal was to generate commissions for himself by selling high fee, high commission products. Those actions, according to arbitration claims filed against Tatro, forced his former clients to drastically alter their standard of living and caused personal and financial losses.