(February 4 – 12:00 ET) – An upcoming film about a boiler-room brokerage, starring Ben Affleck and Giovanni Ribisi, is drawing praise from securities regulators.
The movie, “Boiler Room,” from writer-director Ben Younger, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and is slated for wide release February 18.
According to Sundance promotional material, “Younger’s bankers are bad men with detestable values and malignant personalities who deify the dollar bill and engender the same sexist machismo as the raging hip-hop sound track. Boiler Room is a study of the attenuated struggle between conscience and corruption on the battleground of masculinity.”
Bradley Skolnik, Indiana’s Securities Commissioner and president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, says “Ben Younger deserves to be commended for this realistic, insider’s view of crime at a fly-by-night brokerage firm.”
Skolnik says there’s a message in the movie for investors, and prospective boiler- room operators. “What we want people to take away from this movie is this: These boiler-room operations simply steal people’s money by lying. These aren’t investment houses, they’re criminal enterprises and we’re committed to putting the people behind them behind bars.”
Nevertheless he admits that boiler rooms are still a problem, with shops in New York and Florida pushing stocks, while “boiler rooms in California and Canada promote other scams.”
Skolnik added, “The vast majority of stock brokers are ethical professionals who, out of enlightened self-interest, work hard for their clients.”