Defunct Irvine Brokerage Sued Over Retirement Funds

Federal regulators this week sued defunct Irvine brokerage Waldron & Co. and its former president, Cery B. Perle, saying the firm failed to forward money withheld from employees’ paychecks to their retirement fund. The U.S. Labor Department alleges the firm pocketed $50,364 in employee retirement funds between April and August 1998. That same year, Waldron got into hot water with securities regulators. Authorities said the firm mounted a scheme in 1998 to inflate the share price of Shopping.com, a Corona del Mar online retailer that it took public. The National Assn. of Securities Dealers, which had suspended the firm’s registration in December 1998 for failing to pay $350,000 in compensatory damages related to Shopping.com, expelled the brokerage last month. The Labor Department’s lawsuits call for Waldron and Perle to restore the retirement plan’s losses and for them to be removed as the plan’s fiduciaries.