Update: Feds say Newport broker invented $1B client
3:41 PM Mon, Mar 09, 2009 | Permalink
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Get the 7 to 7 on your mobile at www.projo.com. Twitter: projo | RSS | Email alerts PROVIDENCE -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a Rhode Island woman with making up a $1 billion client to attract real clients to her money managing company. The commission filed suit in U.S. District Court against Leila Jenkins and her firm, Locke Capital Management, seeking return of ill-gotten gains and fines against her and the company. The SEC alleges that Jenkins told clients that she had as much as $1.6 billion under management when, in fact, the agency says, her total never exceeded $165 million. Jenkins' lawyer, Edmund W. Searby of Cleveland, said this afternoon, "To our understanding, there is no issue that any client assets are missing or have been misappropriated. In fact, Locke has outperformed for its clients during the recent remarkable decline in the markets. The main thrust of the SEC's complaint, as we understand it, is that Locke has made misrepresentations in certain marketing materials to prospective clients. Locke intends to contest the allegations in court." He declined to discuss the case further. After inventing a "Swiss Private Bank" as a client, the SEC says, Jenkins attracted two foreign banks, which are not identified in the lawsuit, as clients. The SEC alleges that Jenkins fabricated regulatory filings and client brochures that showed investments under her direction returned more than they actually had, including showing returns for several years when she had no clients. The suit does not allege that any client money is missing. Part of Jenkins' undoing was the use of a free Hotmail e-mail account, according to the SEC. The lawsuit says she told regulators that she used the Hotmail account to communicate with the Swiss Private Bank. But, the SEC says, messages supposedly sent from Switzerland were actually sent from someone logged in in New York, a city in which Jenkins had an office. In 1983, while a resident of Darien, Conn., Jenkins married a lawyer, Edward J. Waite III. They later divorced and she married a Brit, Malcolm Ian Sinclair, the 20th Earl of Caithness. Their marriage took place at Scotland's historic Rosslyn Chapel, a site familiar to fans of the Da Vinci Code. The Earl filed for divorce a year later. Jenkins is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Preservation Society of Newport County. Phone records show her at 25 Walnut St., Newport, and at 227 Australian Ave., Palm Beach, Fla. Phone messages from a reporter left at both locations have not been returned. 
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Who did she think she was Madoff's partner?
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curse that hotmail....
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Below is from her website's bio (now taken down). If Projo wants to sell some papers a little fact checking of this might be in order. Nothing like exposing a NYYC member and Newport upper crust as a fraud to cheer up the great unwashed in this time of economic crisis.
"Ms. Jenkins recently served as an Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching a course in International Strategic Consulting.She holds a BA degree in Economics from Boston College and an MPA degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she studied the impact of global public policy on the world's financial markets.She also completed an Executive International Finance program at the Colgate Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia."
"She is a member of the Finance Committee of the Preservation Society of Newport County, RI, Financial Advisor and a member of the Council of Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA), and the Security Industry Association's (SIA) Government Relations Committee.Also as a volunteer, she is an International Judge for the International Sailing Federation."
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