Pearl Lee (married name: Gitter) was my Financial Adviser at Janney Montgomery Scott.
This woman's business ethics is completely without integrity nor morals.
She would take advantage of any opportunity that would garner her financial benefits without crossing any legal lines - all at the unknowing expense of the client.
Pearl Lee's ability to dispense financial advice to persuade her clients is all driven by "How can this benefit me"? Beware, she is very deceptive!
One tactic she did to my account fooled even Janney, having the company think she made money in my retirement account when she clearly did not. This deceptive tactic was done at the end of December when all her clients portfolio performance were to be evaluated by yearend.
Few years ago, I liquidated some stocks from my IRA that was performing poorly and asked Pearl to withdraw $31,000 for personal emergency. She did without hesitation.
But here's what happened, in December of that same year, Pearl made another $31,000 exact amount withdraw from the same IRA account.
However, after the withdraw, she recanted and deposited that amount back into my account.
By doing this, she can cleverly explain, "Opps sorry, I made a mistake but immediately corrected it. No harm".
Well I strongly believe this was completely intentional.
How convenient for this "mistake" to happen on the last business day of December.
In addition, making a withdraw on an IRA cannot be a simple keystroke "mistake", there are penalties involved for the client. To withdraw, Pearl must authorize the amount, add her password and do a verification for this action to be executed.
Here is how she fooled Janney.
The 2 cash withdraw would use the same transaction code in Janney's computer system.
However, there is a different code to return the money.
When Janney evaluated my IRA portfolio, all they look at is the starting balance and ending balance. They would calculate any amount contributed into my IRA and of course, any withdrawals. Since the transaction code for withdraws are the same, the 2 withdrawals were factored in giving the illusion I had took home $62,000.
They did not factor in that other code that nullified the 2nd withdraw in December.
So for an account that was performing poorly, Janney would see and believed Pearl did an excellent job and made money in my IRA (and that of course would dictate bonuses, rewards or advancements, if any, for her).
Those of you who are still her clients, take note.
This is just one greedy tactic out of many she would do to fool her unsuspecting clients.
If you made a withdraw on an account that has performed poorly (thanks to her) and by year end, another withdraw of that same amount was "mistakenly" executed but rectified, she is using you.
Do not reward her for poor performance. Fire her immediately!