10 Key Details in the Peregrine Financial Collapse

Russ Sr. may not have been the only one in on the apparent fraud at Peregrine. Though he had a fancy wedding scheduled for Aug. 4, he tied the knot with his fiancee Nancy Palladino in a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas on June 30. Three days later, he signed over power-of-attorney to his son, Russ Jr., Peregrine's president. Were these simply seen as oddities by those close to him? Or were there others who were hip to the scheme and its impeding unraveling?

... If you believe in the idea of like attracting like, then it may not be surprising that Peregrine was tied up in a legal battle with the receiver for victims of Trevor Cook, who ran a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of $194 million and who traded $48 million in accounts at Peregrine. That was huge business for Peregrine, which had around $203 million in customer equity at the time. The lawsuit against Peregrine alleges that the company overlooked "objective red flags of fraud" because the business from Cook was very lucrative.