Jeffrey Erez

The Products and the Account Records

A structured note fuses a debt obligation with a return tied to one or more reference assets, and its promise depends on the path those assets travel during the note’s life. Some notes pay a contingent coupon only while a reference asset holds above a stated level; some can be called away before maturity, ending further coupon payments. Coupon, barrier, call, maturity, reference-asset and principal-protection terms together determine the potential return and the point at which principal becomes exposed to loss.

FINRA has warned that structured notes can be far harder to evaluate than traditional bonds, and it requires broker-dealers to train their representatives, explain how a complex product may behave across different markets, assess suitability, and supervise every recommendation. In an investor case, those duties become questions of proof. Product documents establish the contractual terms. Account statements and concentration data establish activity and exposure. Messages, recorded calls, adviser testimony, and supervision records establish what customers were actually told — and what supervisors actually knew. Erez builds his cases where those three layers of evidence meet.

The Deluca and Jannetti claims were filed days apart in May 2023 and proceeded on separate tracks. Both concerned structured-note recommendations by the same former Stifel adviser, Chuck A. Roberts. Erez and Apotheker represented the investors in each proceeding, before panels of independent public arbitrators selected through the forum, with FINRA administering the cases while the arbitrators alone heard the evidence and decided the awards.

Deluca: Thirty Hearing Sessions

Louis and Elizabeth Deluca and their company, UBS, Inc., asserted fiduciary-duty, supervision, fraud, contract, and Florida securities-law claims arising from their structured-note investments.

Before the merits hearing, Erez and Apotheker represented the claimants in prehearing conferences before a single arbitrator and the full panel, and they marshaled the product, recommendation, account, and supervisory evidence into a coherent presentation. The panel then sat for thirty hearing sessions across eleven dates in July and August 2024 — and because FINRA’s fee schedule caps a session at four hours, that count reflects a sustained, weeks-long evidentiary campaign.

On October 3, 2024, the three arbitrators awarded $1,998,311 in compensatory damages to Louis and Elizabeth Deluca and $2,067,125 to UBS, Inc., including statutory interest through June 30, 2023 — and then added $9 million in punitive damages under Florida law and common law. The stated award totaled $14,266,061 before additional interest on the compensatory sums. The panel also denied with prejudice Roberts’s request to remove the customer dispute from his registration record, so the outcome specified relief across compensatory, punitive, and record-related categories, resolving every pleaded cause of action after thirty sessions of proof.

Jannetti: Thirty-Eight Hearing Sessions

David Jannetti had sold his business and moved from New York to Miami, and he and his children Sarah Lyn, Adam, and Leah asserted six causes of action against Stifel concerning structured-note investments. Erez and Apotheker represented the family before an all-public panel in Boca Raton.

The case proceeded through thirty-eight hearing sessions on nineteen dates between October 2024 and January 2025. At its center sat auto-callable contingent-coupon notes linked to a biotechnology exchange-traded fund and to individual technology stocks — instruments whose income could vanish and whose principal could evaporate the moment the reference assets fell through their barriers.

The March 12, 2025 award did something FINRA awards rarely do: it explained itself. The panel found overconcentration in structured notes and in narrow industries, the use of leverage, failures of heightened supervision, misleading text messages sent outside required recordkeeping channels, and a branch manager who did not know that Roberts required heightened supervision at all. It found that Stifel chose not to send an overconcentration letter after a telephone call even though the firm’s own notes did not show that concentration had ever been discussed.

The panel concluded that Stifel had actual knowledge of the wrongfulness of the conduct and of the high probability of injury, and intentionally continued the course that caused the damage. It found that the firm placed its financial interest ahead of the clients’ interests and permitted inaccurate terminology in texts offering custom notes. The arbitration panel’s written findings supplied the stated foundation for punitive damages.

The Jannetti Award: $132,522,260

Compensatory damages totaled $26,504,292 across the four family members. Punitive damages totaled $79,512,876 — three times the compensatory award. Together with attorneys’ fees and costs, the panel’s stated award reached $132,522,260, with Florida statutory interest running on the compensatory damages from the award date until payment.

The written findings tied account concentration, leverage, supervision, off-channel communications, and branch management directly to the punitive-damages decision, giving the award an internal architecture built to withstand review. Erez’s team then carried that arbitral record into federal court.

Federal Confirmation

The Jannettis petitioned the Southern District of Florida to confirm the award on March 12, 2025 — the very day it issued — and Erez remained counsel of record throughout the federal proceeding, defending the family’s award against Stifel’s vacatur arguments under the Federal Arbitration Act. The briefing carried the arbitral result into a forum capable of entering judgment, awarding prejudgment interest, and giving the relief full judicial force.

On February 6, 2026, Magistrate Judge Eduardo I. Sanchez recommended confirmation, denial of Stifel’s vacatur petition, and prejudgment interest, concluding that the panel had neither exceeded its authority in awarding punitive damages nor denied Stifel due process. On March 24, 2026, District Judge Darrin P. Gayles reviewed the disputed portions anew, adopted the recommendation in full, confirmed the award, denied vacatur, and granted the post-award interest.

The federal order gave judicial force to the $132,522,260 arbitral award and its written findings. After confirmation, the Jannettis sought a separate final judgment stating the award and accrued interest in fixed dollar amounts. From the initial FINRA claim through nineteen hearing dates, confirmation briefing, and post-award enforcement, Erez never left the case.

Erez Law

Erez founded Erez Law in Miami and devotes his entire practice to securities arbitration and litigation for investors. His work in Deluca and Jannetti spanned product terms, account reconstruction, adviser and supervision records, panel hearings, written punitive findings, and federal confirmation — the full arc from complex product to enforceable judgment.

Across the two separate records, Erez and Stefan Apotheker managed different witness sequences, different damages presentations, and different enforcement decisions, because the separate timelines demanded them. Erez remained with each family from the first filing through the applicable enforcement stage, preserving continuity while keeping each client’s evidence and remedies separately attributable — the discipline that lets two records, tried apart, each stand on its own.

He graduated cum laude from McGill University in 1993 and earned his law degree cum laude from the University of Miami in 1996. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1997 and is also admitted in the Southern and Middle Districts of Florida.

Erez speaks French and Hebrew.