I opened an account with $25,000.00 with A.G. Edwards and sons in 1989 with the intent of long term capital growth. Charlie Core, of your Abilene, TX. Office was our agent. During the nine years my account was at A.G. Edwards a margin balance was constantly maintained by Mr. Core and Hugh Cooper, costing us untold sums of money. At this time the wife and I were young and dumb and had no way of knowing how much this was costing us. We had no way of getting ahead with all the margin interest paid. Most of the stocks Mr. Core bought were good stocks with the exception of Pride refineries, and a few others, that were supposed to pay a great dividend. The stock payed the dividend for a short period and then stopped and the price quickly went from $17.00 to $2.00. Mr. Core never picked a super stock but most not all were steady performers but with the margin interest we were paying on the account there was no way the account could ever make money. I deposited $500.00 a month for years while Mr. Core controlled the account and the stocks purchased. If the account had never had the margin it may have done okay. This is in direct contrast to what we wanted the account to do.
We moved the account to Columbus, MS.in 1998 and Hugh Cooper took over. When we transferred my account to Columbus, MS, we told Mr. Cooper that we wanted to get rid of the margin balance and seek growth of the account. The balance when we transferred the account was $125,000. When the account was at Columbus, Mr. Cooper sold us out of all the core stocks and purchased more risky stocks. We deposited some $60,000 plus the initial $25,000 plus the $500.00 per month into the account. I borrowed $60,000 out of the account to buy land and not long after that in 1998 the margin calls started. The agent had me selling all our winning stocks and the buying and selling of stocks went up ten-fold with Hugh Cooper. He was trading stocks in both our joint account and our IRA's. We ended up going from an account worth well over $220,000 to a joint account worth $5,000 and two IRA's worth about $20,000 each. I found several of the stocks in magazines and asked Mr. Cooper about them, as he was supposed to be the expert. He would tell me the ones that looked good and we would buy that stock. We purchased Applied Materials a disk drive company several times on the way down and that cost us a ton of money. There were numerous times I would call Mr. Cooper would call me and tell Mr. Cooper to sell some of our stocks and he would assure me it would be okay and talk me out of selling the stocks. When all was said and done I made the mistake of filing a simplified arbitration covering only the 18 months Mr Cooper had the account. I screwed up when we took it for arbitration of only this period and lost as a result of my own stupidity. I left Mr. Core out of the lawsuit in 1998 as he had gained our trust and I didn't realize what a crook he is or know what he was costing us in the long run. We had limited funds at the time and made this mistake of filing for simplified arbitration. I screwed this lawsuit up when we took it for arbitration and lost as a result of my own stupidity. I wholeheartedly believe if I'd covered the entire 9 years and taken Charlie Core to the arbitration we would have won and our stolen money would have been returned. Charlie Core is a crooked broker don't trust him please. Maybe some public embarrassment will cause them to return our money.
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