Pond Equities, Inc. (CRD #30934, Brooklyn, New York) and Ezra Yehuda
Birnbaum (CRD #1553347, Registered Principal, Brooklyn, New York)
submitted a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent in which they were
censured and fined $10,000, jointly and severally. The firm was also fined an
additional $7,000. Without admitting or denying the allegations, the respondents
consented to the described sanctions and to the entry of findings that the firm,
acting through Birnbaum, failed to enforce its written supervisory procedures in
that it could not provide evidence that when customers made checks payable to
the firm, the firm informed the customers in writing of the requirement to make
checks payable to the clearing firm in the future. The findings also stated that the
firm failed to show the correct time of execution on the order memoranda in
transactions. In addition, the NASD found that the firm executed short sale
transactions in Nasdaq National Market® (NNM) securities and failed to report
the transactions to Automated Confirmation Transaction ServiceSM (ACTSM).
with a short sale modifier. Furthermore, the findings stated that the firm, acting
through Birnbaum, failed to report customer complaints to the NASD as part of
the Statistical and Summary Reporting requirement. (NASD Case #C10010081)
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