A securities representative who works for a Rye Brook broker-dealer has been sanctioned for filing inaccurate financial reports and sharing commissions with an individual who was barred from the securities business.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Stephanie Amundsen Murray $10,000, on Aug. 19, and barred her from associating with FINRA members for three months. Murray consented to the sanctions, without admitting or denying the findings.
Murray is a self-employed accountant who provides financial operations services to various broker-dealers and investment advisers.
She works as a registered representative for Profor Advisors in Rye Brook, according to FINRA. But the sanctions concern activities for other firms that occurred before she joined Profor last year.
From January 2020 to March 2022, Murray was responsible for keeping the general ledger and other financial records for Burpee Del Simone Capital Markets, Boston. FINRA says she inaccurately recorded the firm’s expenses and prepared inaccurate monthly reports.
From late 2020 to early 2021, when she was representing Fox Chase Capital Partners in New Jersey, the firm was paid finders fees totaling $26,000 for transactions generated by an individual who is barred from the securities industry. Murray was paid $9,375 from the finders fees and then gave the commissions to the barred individual.
The FINRA consent decree does not identify the barred individual, but the details are consistent with sanctions previously brought against Murray’s father, Joseph Stanley Amundsen.
Amundsen worked for Profor Securities from 2005 to 2010, according to FINRA records, and Murray worked for the firm from 2010 to 2018 and rejoined it last November.
Amundsen also had also done work for Fox Chase Capital Partners from 2003 to 2010. Murray worked for the firm from 2005 to 2021.
Amundsen was a certified public accountant in New York and California. In 1983, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued him for violating anti-fraud laws. He settled the case, without admitting or denying the truth of the allegations, and he was permanently barred from practicing before the SEC.
Nonetheless, according to SEC records, Amundsen audited more than a thousand financial statements for broker-dealers from 2003 to 2011 and acted as the financial operations official for many broker-dealers.
In 2011, FINRA barred Amundsen from associating with any of its member firms. At that point, according to the SEC records, Murray had obtained a license to work as a financial operations official and began representing firms her father had represented.
For example, Amundsen had supervised and approved Profor’s 2014 audit, according to the SEC. “In reality, however, the defendant’s daughter was Profor’s financial and operations principal and had final responsibility for all financial matters,” a federal judge stated in a 2019 contempt order against Amundsen.
FINRA’s brokercheck database shows no record of irregularities or sanctions against Profor Advisors.
