Two more Oregon men charged with securities violations in alleged Grifphon hedge fund fraud

yusaf_jawed.png Yusaf Jawed

Federal regulators have charged three men -- two from Oregon -- with violating securities laws when they recruited more than 40 investors to entrust nearly $16 million with a Lake Oswego hedge-fund manager now accused of fraud.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged

of Portland,

of Milwaukie and

of Indio, Calif., of violating the registration requirements of federal securities laws.

The three earned a total of nearly $800,000 in commissions for hooking investors up with Yusaf Jawed, now accused of running a $37 million Ponzi scheme with his hedge funds at

.

Federal investigators also are

related to the scheme, which regulators say defrauded more than 100 investors, most of them from Oregon. Attorneys Robert J. Custis of Salem and Jacques Nichols and former Jawed associate Lyman Bruhn

.

O'Dierno, Persad and Daniels all agreed to settle the charges against them. None was charged with having knowledge of or aiding in Jawed's alleged fraud.

All three previously held securities licenses and worked for registered broker-dealers. But none was registered when they began raising money for Jawed, the SEC says.

They answered questions about the funds, repeated assertions Jawed made and circulated marketing materials. The SEC now says those assertions and materials contained false and inflated statements about the returns and conditions of Jawed's funds.

"If you engage in this type of selling activity, you need to be registered as a broker-dealer," said Erin Schneider, assistant regional director with the SEC's San Francisco office.

O'Dierno, 45, has agreed to pay $45,600 in penalties, Schneider said. From 2005 to 2008, O'Dierno persuaded seven investors to place a combined $2.3 million with Jawed, the SEC said. Jawed paid him $118,700 in commissions.

Last year,  O'Dierno paid Jawed $82,700 when Jawed claimed the money would help a third party buy Grifphon's assets, the SEC alleged. Investigators have since alleged that buyout was a sham.

The SEC said it waived $292,600 in penalties against Daniels, 35, because he can't afford to pay. From 2007 to 2009, Daniels talked 20 investors into investing a total of $4.3 million with Grifphon, including $1.2 million from Daniels' family. Jawed, in return, paid Daniels $287,000 in commissions.

The SEC also waived $415,400 in penalties against Persad, 50, based on his sworn statement of financial condition. From 2006 to 2009, Persad brought in $9 million from 26 investors, the SEC said. Jawed paid Persad $386,700 in commissions.

Persad currently works at

of Marylhurst, which he co-founded as an intermediary for commercial funding, the SEC said.

All three men also agreed to be barred for three years from the investment industry.

This wasn't Persad's first time to run afoul of regulators, records show.

In 2004, a National Association of Securities Dealers arbitration panel issued a

in favor of

of Portland and against Blackwell Donaldson & Co.

The college alleged that the men and the brokerage violated federal and state securities laws and sought $10.5 million in damages and costs for its investment in Environmental Oil Processing Technology Corp., records show.

The

, which currently oversees brokers, reports that Daniels and his employer, Raymond James Financial Services Inc. in Palm Desert, Calif., currently face a customer complaint alleging more than $330,000 in damages.

Daniels is accused of violating FINRA rules and Oregon and California securities laws, FINRA records show. The written complaint, filed in July, is pending arbitration, according to FINRA records. Schneider said she was not familiar with the complaint, and a spokeswoman for FINRA said she could not access it.

Before you invest money through a broker-dealer, be sure to check his or her history at

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