By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham has been permanently banned from the securities trading industry in Massachusetts, and must pay a $15,000 fine after after losing $400,000 that a 67-year-old artist invested in one of his projects.
According to consent decrees that Securities Division of the Massachusetts Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth entered into with Graham and North Carolina-based Capital Investment Group, Graham in 2012 convinced the woman to invest in Groveton, an entity controlled by another company owned by him and business partner Eric Wnuck. (In 2010, Wnuck briefly ran for Congress in AZ-05.) According to the website Financial Planning, which broke the news of Graham’s banning, the Groveton project was to dismantle a New Hampshire paper mill for the steel, copper and wood it contained.
The investor lost the entirety of her investment, which came from two trusts she oversaw for her mother and brother.
Documents signed by the investor stated that her risk tolerance was relatively low, and Graham was aware of this, according to the consent decrees. Nonetheless, the investor “suffered substantial losses through risky investments made on Graham’s recommendation,” the consent decree stated.
