NASD Fines Firms That Sold Shopping.com

The National Assn. of Securities Dealers has ordered brokerages that sold Shopping.com stock to pay $400,000 in compensatory damages for artificially boosting the stock price. The arbitration panel’s ruling, released Friday, ordered Irvine-based Waldron & Co. and Los Angeles-based Wedbush, Morgan Securities, as well as Waldron’s former executive Cery Perle and financier Edward Harris, to pay the combined damages to Fiero Bros., a New York-based stock brokerage. Corona del Mar-based Shopping.com was not fined. Fiero Bros. claimed earlier this year that Waldron and Wedbush boosted prices artificially by selling and reselling the stock in-house. Since mid-August, the stock fell from about $25 to Friday’s close of $1.05 a share.