[ad_1]
What You Must Know
- A preliminary injunction bars the agency and proprietor from involvement with belief property.
- The agency, RiversEdge, is a third-party administrator of not less than 240 retirement plans.
- RiversEdge and Paul Palguta transferred property from 17 retirement plans into their very own company accounts, in line with the division.
A federal choose this week issued a preliminary injunction in opposition to a Pennsylvania retirement plan administrator accused of embezzling not less than $5.5 million in property from a number of plans.
The motion by the U.S. District Court docket for the Western District of Pennsylvania follows a criticism and movement filed by the U.S. Division of Labor in January and an emergency momentary restraining order issued earlier this month.
The order bars defendants RiversEdge Superior Retirement Options LLC in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and proprietor Paul Palguta from additional involvement with belief property and from serving as fiduciaries or service suppliers to any plans lined by the Worker Retirement Revenue Safety Act of 1974, or ERISA.
The court docket order additionally forbids RiversEdge, a third-party administrator of not less than 240 retirement plans, and Palguta from withdrawing any funds from two company accounts into which they’re alleged to have illegally transferred plan property, apart from court-ordered fee of unbiased fiduciary charges.
It additionally requires them to protect all related data for switch to a court-appointed unbiased fiduciary, and requires the unbiased fiduciary to supervise an accounting of 17 allegedly mismanaged plans. Fourteen of the allegedly mismanaged plans are lined by ERISA, in line with the preliminary injunction.
The allegedly mismanaged plans embrace the nonprofit Christian Assist Mission’s 403(b) plan, an LCBC Church 403(b) and the St. Barnabas Well being System Retirement Financial savings Plan, in line with the injuction order.
The plans that RiversEdge administered maintain hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in property, DOL mentioned in a launch. ERISA covers not less than 229 of those retirement plans.
An investigation by the division’s Worker Advantages Safety Administration decided RiversEdge and Palguta violated ERISA.
[ad_2]
