In early 1982, Hanauer’s executives settled several charges filed against the firm by the SEC. The federal agency sanctioned 18 of the company’s employees and officers who were barred indefinitely from working in brokerage industry. Four of these individuals were among those censured by the SEC in 1977. The SEC also fined Hanauer amount equal to the fraudulent overcharges on the large customer cash transactions. Among other penalties imposed on the firm were restrictions on future expansion and the for feature of profits for a four-month period on new customer account. Finally, the SEC required Hanauer to retain a new accounting firm and to establish internal controls that would prevent future violations of federal securities laws. In response to published reports of the SEC settlement’ Hanauer’s president stated that a key factor in the firm’s decision to settle the case was avoiding the costs of fighting the charges in court.
Two years following the settlement with the SEC, Hanauer pleaded guilty to criminal charges to comply with the requirements of the Currency and Foreign Transactions Act. In this settlement, Hanauer’s president noted that his firm failed to report the large cash transactions because of clerical oversights. He also insisted that the firm pleaded guilty to the criminal charges to avoid the costs of future litigation.
In September 1983, the SEC sanctioned Stanley Goldberg for his role in the Hanauer case. The SEC charged that Goldberg should have recognized the material weaknesses in his client’s internal controls. Additionally, the SEC maintained that Goldberg should have recognized that the client had imposed material scope limitations on its annual audits by not allowing many customer account to be confirmed. Goldberg’s failure to instruct his subordinates to apply extensive alternative audit procedures to those account that the client did not want confirmed particularly disturbed the SEC. Finally, the SEC pointed out that Goldberg never inquired of his subordinates regarding how many confirmations were not mailed at the client’s at the client’s request or the collective dollar value of those account. Surprisingly, this information was not compiled in a summary in the Hanauer audit workpapers.