Atlanta B-D Arkadios Capital pays $500K to settle investor lawsuit involving former broker.

A former longtime broker, Jim Walesa, continues to be the focus of large, costly legal settlements paid by firms where he formerly worked, with Arkadios Capital in September agreeing to pay $500,000 to a former client who sued the firm in 2024.

Walesa, an independent-contractor broker, was registered with Arkadios from 2019 to 2021 after spending the bulk of his career at Triad Advisors.

Arkadios and he, along with Triad Advisors, have faced claims alleging the sale of illiquid investments that did not perform and were allegedly not appropriate.

In 2024, the former client of Walesa, a middle-aged farmer, alleged that the broker made “unsuitable recommendations,” according to his BrokerCheck report. At the instruction of Walesa, the client invested “a significant portion of his life savings” in fraudulent companies.

InvestmentNews reported in January 2024 that Walesa allegedly sold clients illiquid alternative investments, including real estate deals, that he also managed, owned or directed. In other words, he was allegedly both the salesperson and the product sponsor to some clients, a conflict.

Spence Pryor, an attorney for Arkadios Capital, declined to comment.

Walesa worked in the securities industry for 39 years before leaving in 2021. He then became CEO of a senior care technology company, Clearday. FINRA barred him from the securities industry earlier this year. 

Arkadios has at least two more claims involving Walesa pending. The $500,000 settlement, which was finalized September 9, is the largest of a handful of such settlements Arkadios has agreed to involving Walesa.

Walesa spent most of his career registered with Triad Advisors, a broker-dealer that was eventually acquired by Advisor Group, which is now Osaic.

The settlements involving Walesa at Arkadios have been much smaller than those with Triad Advisors and Osaic. In contrast, legal settlements involving Walesa since 2021 have cost Osaic about $26.3 million, according to a tally of his BrokerCheck profile.

In one instance over the summer, Osaic settled a complaint with investors for $9.4 million.

The clients in the $9.4 million settlement from August alleged violations of Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA and state regulations linked to “investment related activities” of Walesa, according to BrokerCheck, with the products involved illiquid and expensive limited partnerships and direct investment programs.

Osaic has prevailed in at least one large investor complaint stemming from Walesa’s clients.

A FINRA arbitration panel in January denied a claim against Triad by investors seeking as much as $34 million in damages.

The claim was filed in February 2024 on behalf of dozens of former clients of Walesa.

The investors claimed unsuitable investment recommendations, failure to supervise, violation of common law fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, negligent failure to supervise and negligence, according to the award.

The investors’ lawsuit pointed to a number of conflicts of interest related to the “allegation that Walesa created various business enterprises where he owned, operated or otherwise directed those businesses and for which he raised funding by creating and operating various limited partnerships,” according to the arbitration award.