Pearl Lee

Churning of Retirement Account and Betrayal

BEWARE of Pearl Lee of Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia, PA.

This woman is morally bankrupt and a complete fraud in both her professional and personal life!

In 2005, Pearl Lee Gitter was a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. At that time, her future brother-in-law and co-worker, Steve left Morgan Stanley for another financial firm. Immediately after his departure from Morgan Stanley, Pearl Lee did not hesitate to seize Steve’s richest of clients for herself. It may be a common practice for an investment firm to make every effort to retain their clients and convince them to not move with their adviser but for Pearl Lee, it did not morally compute in her head that Steve was FAMILY. Greed took over.

Anyone with an ounce of decency and basic morals would know not to steal, especially from friends and family. But Pearl Lee lack these convictions and got caught. She says she was deeply sorry, regretted it and profusely apologized to Steve and his team of associates. Because no damage was done, Steve forgave her. The lesson Pearl Lee claimed to have learned, “Never take advantage of family”.

Fast forward to 2011, Pearl Lee is now with Janney Montgomery (she left Morgan Stanley in 2006). In 2011, she received her first FINRA investigation due to a complaint filed against her. Who filed it?
Her own brother (the closest member of her nuclear family).
In the first 4 years with Janney (2006-2010), she needed to meet her monthly quota and the easiest prey among her clientele list – her own brother.
She took advantage of his trust and naivety of the market and made over 140+ unnecessary trades on his small IRA accounts between 2006-2010 – basically decimated his retirement portfolio.
She bought stocks high and sold them low.
She bought him long term mutual funds and sold them in less than 6 months.
She made his retirement account fluid and would not stop CHURNING – charging over $3000 per year in fees and commissions. And she did all this with no regrets.

When her brother discovered her actions, he confronted her.
Unlike her brother-in-law Steve, damage was already done.
When given a choice to make restitution or face retribution, she chose money over her own family. This is the very nature, the true colors of Pearl Lee – Selfish Greed! Her brother reported her to FINRA who agreed to investigate.

So to anyone who is a current client or about to use Pearl Lee as their financial adviser, beware and consider this! If Pearl Lee is reckless, irresponsible and greedy with her own family member’s financial accounts, how do you think she would manage your life savings and investments? She is deceptive and does not learn from the mistakes of her past. Money is her god! Be forewarned.

Pearl Lee has absolutely no integrity and no morals when it comes to money. Her betrayal deserves nothing but contempt! I would know – I am her brother!

Is Pearl Lee a legit?

Pearl Lee is not running a legit business. They are not aggressive towards customer satisfaction and complaint grievance redressal, Hence 4 consumer[s] submitted negative ratings, and only a few left positive feedback.

Where is Pearl Lee located?

Pearl Lee is headquarted at Philadelphia PA. You can contact Pearl Lee by dialing 215-665-6187 or visit their website pearllee.net.

How much monetary loss is incurred by Pearl Lee’s customers?

According to Pearl Lee’s customers, a monetary loss of US N/A has been reported. The severity of entire incident reports is extremely high.

Write a review or complaint on Pearl Lee

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

4 Reviews on Pearl Lee

  1. Janney Headquarters in Philadelphia

    Sharing this 11/26/2022 post from another consumer review website about Pearl Lee. This appears to be from an anonymous staff member within Janney headquarters. Thank You so much for sharing.
    —————————–
    In mid-February of this year 2022, our Philadelphia Janney headquarter office received a bombshell about Pearl Lee. An external email was sent to multiple associates detailing Pearl Lee’s numerous online negative reviews and customer complaints spanning several years. Pearl Lee quickly became the gossip in our office. This email was immediately forwarded to our Communications Director (BD) and our Corporate Lawyer (MG) for resolution. Initially, we believed these online accusations had no merit and came from a known disgruntle family member/client, so we felt a defamation suit would be warranted. I say this because many of us as Fiduciaries would be impacted by these numerous public negative reviews which could derail future clients that are interested in investing with us at Janney. After several months, we found out NO ACTIONS relating to defamation will be done by our legal counsel. No cease and desist, not even minor suits like Interference with Business Relations or Emotional Distress. In conclusion, no actions will be executed because (according to internal sources), this would be a public relations nightmare for Janney. Apparently there is no winning pursuing a lawsuit against the one source of these negative reviews. This tells us there is TRUTH to these online allegations and Pearl Lee’s reputation of defrauding her clients is a FACT! So, on behalf of us true fiduciaries, I apologize to all of Pearl Lee’s victims. Not all financial advisors are greedy and corrupt.

    —————————–
    I am Pearl Lee’s brother and feeling vindicated. I never got my justice so will accept poetic justice.

    1. My response to the anonymous Janney staff

      I am Pearl’s (ex)brother and thank you for sharing this insight into Janney internal affairs. I’ve long suspected that both Pearl and Janney are aware of the numerous complaints I have made online against them. Your post confirms that.
      Pearl only has one brother, I’m not anonymous and she knows where I live. And yes, after almost 10 years of sharing and shaming Pearl Lee of Janney Montgomery Scott and detailing her corruption online, I have not heard a single word from either one of them.

      Pearl’s downfall (and probably her biggest regret) was to target and steal from the closest member of her own family, me. Why she did this, only she can explain her own depraved psychology but in my opinion, she is a narcississtic sociopath. She knew I looked up to my big sister, trusted her and never questioned her motives in managing my retirement account. She exploited that trust. I was her perfect victim and she thought she could get away with defrauding my life savings.

      IMO, I personally know Pearl Lee cannot and will not come after me with any civil suit, not because she has empathy or have some respect to not traumatize my life any further beyond what she has already done. No, it is because of FEAR. One of Pearl’s weaknesses is confrontation; she knows that facing me will be contentious, combative, verbally offensive and her actions in my portfolio will be dissected. Pearl Lee can’t handle this scrutiny where she will be under the spotlight, making her a weak and pitiful plaintiff. She chose the easy path to cower, remain silent, ignore the entire situation and hope it goes away. But, for the sake of argument, lets say she finds her ovaries and decide to file a suit, well here’s her second fear – she knows it will be very public. The entire Lee/Li/Wen family will know, including her close friends, the women’s group at AAWC/PASSI, the Philadelphia Chinatown Christian Church community and all her neighbors. I pretty much know everybody in her life. Now if Janney would like to get involve in her defense, I believe Philadelphia local channel 3,6 and 10 News, the Inquirer and other outlets would be interested in this sensational, ‘Goliath v. David’ story.

      In summary, Janney’s Human Resources should use Pearl Lee as their real life case study for annual compliance training and new hire orientation for incoming Financial Advisors. Training title could be something like “So you want to betray your Fiduciary Oath and defraud a family member’s financial portfolio because you think you can get away with it”.

      Repeating this: I never got my justice but will settle for poetic justice!

  2. SHAME ON YOU PEARL

    REMEMBERING SABRINA SOONG!
    ARCHITECT, PHILLY CHINATOWN GATE DESIGNER AND OVERALL WONDERFUL PERSON.
    TO PEARL LEE, SABRINA WAS YOUR FRIEND. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!
    IF SOMEONE EVER STEALS FROM YOU ON YOUR DEATHBED, THIS WOULD BE KARMA!

  3. Negative reviews about Pearl Lee is true

    I personally don’t know Pearl Lee but I was involved in the same Philadelphia women’s group that Pearl Lee belongs to, the Asian American Women’s Coalition – AAWCphilly. I found her business info thru the group and some years ago, I contacted her to inquire about opening a retirement account. One evening with my family and discussing brokerage firms, my brother had the right mind to google Pearl Lee of Janney Montgomery Scott. Our jaws dropped when we found multiple complaints and negative reviews about her spanning several years. Skeptical, I contacted a mutual friend at AAWC to get the facts and to my surprise, she confirmed that the complaints about Pearl were true. Pearl Lee has abused accounts with family and friends, the story where she exploited her own brother’s financial portfolio is very true. My friend even added that a former aawc member (also a former client of Pearl) shared how Pearl repeatedly tried to push a stock for her to buy and when confronted about how much of a commission she would receive, Pearl became defensive and irate. Apparently, Pearl Lee does not like her motives being questioned. So here’s the warning, Pearl Lee really does not have the best interest for her clients, its all about making money for herself! She cannot be trusted with your money!

  4. I'll take FINRA anytime over Consumer Complaint websites

    Damn! I would so prefer a Finra Disclosure over these online assassinations. Google this broker and you can find numerous consumer complaint websites about her but what caught my attention are the multiple unflattering pics of this woman accompanying the complaints. I simply googled “janney montgomery scott complaints” and found her picture. A broker’s FINRA disclosures are not prominent on web searches and FINRA is not an average household word. But Google certainly is.

Reviews: 4
Reported Loss : 0 $
Severity : Extremely High
Reported by : Anonymous
Views :