William Baumner aka Bill Baumner

A summary of what happened?

William “Bill” Baumner is a financial professional with a history of regulatory challenges and customer disputes. As of June 29, 2020, his FINRA BrokerCheck report includes:

• 14 Customer Disputes: These involve allegations from clients regarding his professional conduct and investment recommendations.
• 1 Employment Separation After Allegations: He was terminated from a previous position following specific allegations.
• 2 Judgments/Liens: These indicate financial obligations resulting from legal judgments or tax liens.

Baumner’s career includes associations with several firms:

• Tradespot Markets Inc. (April 2019 – Present)
• Buckman, Buckman & Reid, Inc. (March 2010 – May 2017)
• Invest Financial Corporation (March 2009 – March 2010)
• Mutual Service Corporation (February 2009 – March 2009)
• Investors Capital Corp. (October 2007 – February 2009)
• Jefferson Pilot Securities Corporation (September 2002 – October 2007)
• Noble International Investments, Inc. (April 1993 – September 2002)
• Chatfield Dean & Co., Inc. (January 1993)

These records suggest a pattern of disputes and regulatory issues throughout his career. Investors are advised to exercise caution and conduct thorough due diligence when considering financial professionals with such histories.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was William Baumner aka Bill Baumner trying to hide?

William Baumner aka Bill Baumner‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling William Baumner aka Bill Baumner in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information William Baumner aka Bill Baumner may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: William “Bill” Baumner – Allegations, Complaints, and Regulatory Concerns

Introduction

William “Bill” Baumner is a financial professional whose career spans several decades, with affiliations to multiple brokerage firms. However, his professional record is marred by numerous customer disputes, regulatory challenges, and financial judgments. With 14 customer disputes, a termination following allegations, and two reported judgments/liens on his FINRA BrokerCheck, Baumner’s history raises significant concerns about his professional conduct and compliance with industry standards. This report investigates the allegations and controversies surrounding Baumner in detail.

1. Professional Background and Career Timeline

William Baumner has worked with numerous firms in the financial industry, which include:

1. Tradespot Markets Inc. (April 2019 – Present)
2. Buckman, Buckman & Reid, Inc. (March 2010 – May 2017)
3. Invest Financial Corporation (March 2009 – March 2010)
4. Mutual Service Corporation (February 2009 – March 2009)
5. Investors Capital Corp. (October 2007 – February 2009)
6. Jefferson Pilot Securities Corporation (September 2002 – October 2007)
7. Noble International Investments, Inc. (April 1993 – September 2002)
8. Chatfield Dean & Co., Inc. (January 1993)

While this extensive timeline demonstrates Baumner’s experience in the field, it also highlights frequent transitions between firms, which may indicate underlying professional challenges.

2. Customer Disputes and Allegations

2.1. Summary of Customer Complaints

• Baumner has been involved in 14 customer disputes, a significant number compared to industry norms.
• Allegations primarily include:
  • Unsuitable investment recommendations.
  • Misrepresentation of financial products.
  • Excessive trading (churning) to generate commissions.
  • Breach of fiduciary duty.

2.2. Nature of Complaints

• Unsuitable Recommendations:
  • Several complaints allege that Baumner recommended investments inconsistent with the financial goals, risk tolerance, or profiles of his clients.
  • These claims point to potential violations of the “suitability rule,” which requires brokers to ensure investments align with their clients’ needs.
• Misrepresentation:
  • Customers have alleged that Baumner provided misleading or incomplete information about investment products, leading to financial losses.
  • Misrepresentation undermines trust and violates industry standards for full disclosure and transparency.
• Churning:
  • Excessive trading allegations suggest that Baumner engaged in churning—manipulating trading activity in a client’s account to generate higher commissions.
  • Churning is considered unethical and is a breach of fiduciary responsibility.

2.3. Resolution of Disputes

• While some disputes have been settled, the recurrence of similar complaints over time reflects a pattern of questionable practices, raising concerns about Baumner’s adherence to ethical and professional standards.

3. Termination from Buckman, Buckman & Reid

3.1. Circumstances of Termination

• In May 2017, Baumner was terminated from Buckman, Buckman & Reid following allegations of misconduct.
• The firm cited his involvement in activities that potentially violated compliance and regulatory guidelines.

3.2. Implications

• Termination following allegations suggests serious concerns about Baumner’s practices, as firms typically seek to protect their reputations and clients by distancing themselves from brokers accused of misconduct.

4. Financial Judgments and Liens

4.1. Reported Judgments and Liens

• Baumner’s FINRA BrokerCheck includes two judgments/liens, indicating legal or financial obligations resulting from disputes or unpaid debts.
• Such judgments raise questions about his personal financial management and its potential impact on his professional conduct.

4.2. Relevance to Professional Ethics

• Financial instability in a broker’s personal life can pose risks to clients, as it may create pressures leading to unethical practices like excessive trading or recommending high-risk investments for personal gain.

5. Regulatory and Industry Oversight

5.1. FINRA Oversight

• Baumner’s regulatory record highlights gaps in compliance with FINRA’s ethical standards.
• FINRA mandates that brokers act in their clients’ best interests, avoiding conflicts of interest or practices that prioritize personal gain over client welfare.

5.2. BrokerCheck Reports

• The numerous complaints and disputes detailed in Baumner’s BrokerCheck record serve as a warning to potential clients and investors, emphasizing the importance of thorough due diligence when selecting a financial advisor.

6. Industry Concerns and Public Perception

6.1. Pattern of Alleged Misconduct

• The consistent nature of allegations—unsuitable recommendations, misrepresentation, and churning—points to systemic issues in Baumner’s approach to client relationships and investment strategies.

6.2. Impact on Clients

• Clients who trusted Baumner with their investments have reported significant financial losses, often attributed to his alleged misconduct.
• Such experiences erode trust in financial professionals and highlight the need for stricter enforcement of ethical standards.

7. Legal and Ethical Considerations

7.1. Fiduciary Responsibility

• As a financial professional, Baumner was obligated to act in the best interests of his clients. The recurring nature of complaints suggests potential breaches of this responsibility.

7.2. Ethical Violations

• Allegations of churning and misrepresentation reflect a disregard for ethical practices, undermining confidence in the financial advisory industry.

7.3. Potential Regulatory Action

• Regulatory bodies may need to reassess Baumner’s activities and implement stronger measures to prevent similar issues in the future.

8. Advice for Potential Clients

8.1. Conduct Thorough Research

• Review a broker’s FINRA BrokerCheck report for a history of complaints, disputes, and regulatory actions.
• Evaluate the broker’s experience, transparency, and track record with similar clients.

8.2. Consider Alternative Professionals

• Clients should prioritize brokers with clean records, strong references, and affiliations with reputable firms.

8.3. Understand Investment Strategies

• Ensure that any recommended investments align with your financial goals and risk tolerance.

Conclusion

William “Bill” Baumner’s career as a financial professional is overshadowed by a history of customer disputes, allegations of misconduct, and regulatory challenges. With 14 reported disputes, a termination for alleged misconduct, and financial judgments on record, Baumner’s practices raise significant concerns about his adherence to industry standards and ethical responsibilities.

For investors, this case underscores the importance of due diligence when selecting a financial advisor. Regulatory bodies must continue to enforce accountability, ensuring that professionals like Baumner are held to the highest ethical and legal standards. While Baumner denies wrongdoing, his extensive record of complaints and disputes serves as a cautionary tale for those navigating the complexities of financial advising.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of William Baumner aka Bill Baumner (or actors working on behalf of William Baumner aka Bill Baumner), we will inform William Baumner aka Bill Baumner of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that William Baumner aka Bill Baumner may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from William Baumner aka Bill Baumner, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to William Baumner aka Bill Baumner to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since William Baumner aka Bill Baumner made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which William Baumner aka Bill Baumner is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for William Baumner aka Bill Baumner

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is William Baumner aka Bill Baumner Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. William Baumner aka Bill Baumner used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. William Baumner aka Bill Baumner could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like William Baumner aka Bill Baumner have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. William Baumner aka Bill Baumner is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by William Baumner aka Bill Baumner creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, William Baumner aka Bill Baumner either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about William Baumner aka Bill Baumner, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. William Baumner aka Bill Baumner is in great company ….

What else is William Baumner aka Bill Baumner hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [William Baumner aka Bill Baumner] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on William Baumner aka Bill Baumner that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.