sentenced to 12 years and seven months in early 2003. (Correspondence to the Fort Dix, New Jersey, federal correctional facility requesting to interview Bond was unsuccessful, and calls to Bond’s wife, Sheila, were not returned.)
Bond is one of several African American Wall Street stars who have fallen from grace. Many represent a who’s who from the BE 100S and have been indicted and, in some cases, convicted of charges ranging from investment advisory fraud to money laundering. For example, Raymond McClendon of Pryor, McClendon, Counts & Co. Inc. — a former BE 100S company — and former city of Atlanta investment officer Theresa A. Stanford were convicted on charges that the two ran a scheme to cheat the city of Atlanta out of $15.3 million in investment profits between 1992 and 1994. McClendon was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to a six-year, eight-month prison term as well as levied a $1.5 million fine. Stanford was sentenced to a three-year, 10-month prison term and ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution to the city of Atlanta. Others who have come under scrutiny include former power brokers like Kevin Ingram, a celebrated trader who made BLACK ENTERPRISE’s “Top 25 Blacks on Wall Street” in 1996 and was convicted and served time for money laundering several years later, and Nathan A. Chapman Jr., currently on trial, who recently stood before a judge answering tax and investment-advisory fraud allegations.
A few were cleared of criminal charges but still paid a high price. For instance, San Francisco financier Calvin Grigsby, former CEO of Grigsby, Brandford & Co. and another alum of BE’s 1996 ranking of Wall Street players, was charged with bribery and using his bond business to steal more than $1 million in public funds to finance everything from political contributions to expensive cars and Super Bowl tickets. In 1999, a federal judge in Miami threw out the embezzlement charges, but the damage of the trial and declining business compelled Grigsby to shut down his investment bank. Grigsby was cleared of all charges.
And in one of the most publicized cases in the last decade, Joseph Jett was cleared of charges by the SEC that he made phantom trades. But he was sanctioned for bookkeeping violations and barred from securities trading.
There’s no doubt that the federal authorities have turned up the heat throughout the financial community. In 2003, there were 679 cases filed by the SEC against individuals or firms for securities violations, up 13.5% from 2002. This increased scrutiny is primarily a result of a string of corporate misdeeds that began with Enron in 2002 and worked its way through the nation’s largest mega-corporations. And although nearly all the white-collar crimes allegedly committed by African American suspects pale in comparison to those reportedly committed by Enron’s Kenneth Lay or ex-WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, the entire black financial community feels the heat.
According to Marquette Chester, chairman of the National Association of Securities Professionals, the actions of a few can have an unfair impact on the entire black investment