This Is NOT How Arbitration Works....

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you Vincent McCrudden.

Actually, that LinkedIn profile doesn't really do him justice. Here's how he describes himself on the web site of Alnbri Management, LLC:

Vincent McCrudden - CEO

Mr. McCrudden worked on Wall Street for over 20 years. He started his career on the floors of the New York Commodity Exchange executing orders for some of the largest institutions in the world including hedge funds and Commercial & Investment Banks. He then ran Global Desks in such areas as Foreign Exchange, Credit Derivatives & Equity Derivatives. He taught derivatives courses at the New York Institute of Finance.

Mr. McCrudden is a former soccer player at the University of Rhode Island, and then played professionally for the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Minnesota Strikers of the NASL. He also was an amateur boxer and has raised money over the years for the NYPD for slained [sic] and disabled officers. He has two beautiful children.

Sounds pretty straight forward, right? But wait, there's more. Here's the next paragraph:

Mr. McCrudden has spent the past 13 years and counting combating a colluded Government attempt to discredit and harrass Mr. McCrudden through repeated bogus procedures. Mr. McCrudden has sought relief by suing multiple agencies and officials for $1 Billion. But this has not stopped certain higher ranking officials because they know that Judges are Government employees too. In order to stop the libel, slander and harrassment at the hands of these entities, and with no available forum in the US justice system, Mr. McCrudden has started a process to enact payback for years of Government abuse. As a twice survivor of the WTC bombings, Mr. McCrudden knows all too well what the Government can do in the "name of public interest". Mr. McCrudden believes the 23 friends he lost on 9-11-2001 would have had their full support. Wake up my fellow citizens and middle class and go look into the mirror, because you my friends are the face of the new Al Qaeda! Civil disobedience can be a start for justice. Its us (middle class) against them (Government officials and the Bourgeosie). Start acting now before its too late!

Yes, sir. The crazy crawls out on paragraph three. FINRA BrokerCheck reveals that he was fined $60,063.81 and suspended from association with any FINRA member firm in any capacity for one year (beginning 12/20/2010) for "making abusive, intimidating and threatening communications to his former employer in violation of NASD Rule 2110" and "for inducing the filing of a misleading and inaccurate form U5 by his former firm, also in violation of NASD Rule 2110."

In addition, he is currently embroiled in a civil action brought by the United states Commodity Futures Trading Commission for failing "to register with the CFTC as an Associated Person (AP) of a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO), acting as a CPO without being registered and failing to give notice of an inaccurate claimed exemption from registration filed with the CFTC. Specifically, from May 8,2008, to September 30, 2008, McCrudden allegedly acted as an AP of his firms, without being registered, while soliciting customers to participate in a Commodity Pool."

So he's crazy? So he apparently hasn't met a securities regulation he hasn't violated? So what?

Well, apparently his call to "start acting now before its too late" boils down to "kill 47 SEC officials".

The FBI has him in custody, now. Making wild threats against government and SRO officials from Singapore, and then getting on a plane to come back to the US, that sort of thing is pretty much just asking the FBI to be waiting in the airport for you. A copy of the official criminal complaint against McCrudden is up on Scribd, and it is ten pages of glimpses into sheer high-grade insanity.

What can we learn from this?

1. Register with the SROs that regulate your business. It's simpler in the long run.
2. If you don't register with the SROs that regulate your business, don't threaten the regulators with death when they bring civil action against you. They're just doing their job.
   
3. If you must threaten the regulators with death, consider not doing it on your company web site. It establishes probable cause.
   
4. If you must threaten regulators with death on your company web site, Singapore is not a great place to do it from. We have an extradition treaty with them.
5. If you must threaten regulators with death on your company web site while you are in Singapore, strongly consider not returning to the United States for a while. It attracts attention from the authorities.
   
6. Before threatening any regulators with death from any location in the world, take your meds. They will quiet the voices, and you may see things in a different light.