SEC Fraud

There are a lot of SEC filing forms for almost anything you could possible think of but there aren’t many that regular folks should be concerned with. Here are all the SEC forms, but when it comes to the major forms there are only a handful you need to be aware of.

10-Q: The 10-Q is a quarterly financial report, it’s filed three times a year (the fourth of these filings, which is the last quarter in the company’s fiscal year, is the 10-K).
10-K: The 10-K is the annual financial report.
8-K: The 8-K is a form that is filed as needed and is a “current report” of the company’s status. It’s filed anytime they need to announce major events that shareholders should know about. It’s very much like the 10-K and 10-Q except not regularly scheduled.
S-1/S-3: It’s the registration form filed by companies when they want to begin selling shares. The S-3 is the shorter version of the S-1 for companies that are already public.

Here is a full and comprehensive list of all the forms.

In a separate indictment released on Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the same two ex-Bear Stearns fund managers with defrauding investors as the subprime mortgage market began to collapse. The civil indictment comes at the same time as the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal indictment.

I’m surprised it took this long to get an indictment considering the funds failed in the summer of 2007. The two men are charged with defrauding investors and costing them at least $1 billion through their actions. The main charge is that they covered up the problems with their investments and then tried to get their own money out before recovering investors money.

Sifting Through the SEC Charges of Two Former Bear Stearns Managers [Fox Business]

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