“I am stuck with the bonds,” said Gonzalez, 51. “They are a just a number on paper.”

UBS doesn’t comment on individual arbitration cases, said spokesman Gregg Rosenberg. In a filing responding to the allegations, UBS said Gonzalez “invested very profitably in the funds” for years before the municipal bond market deteriorated.

Fernandez now works as a broker for Popular Securities. Teruca Rullan, a spokeswoman for Popular Inc., the parent company, said he would not be available for comment.

Vulnerable Workers

At the time of leaving a longtime employer, workers are often confused and vulnerable to unsound financial advice. In 2010, Albert Grathwol stopped by a hotel to attend a seminar organized by Raymond J. Lucia Sr., a radio personality who also ran an investment firm. Grathwol was about to retire as a structural engineer for Aecom Technology Corp., a Los Angeles- based engineering design company.

Signing up with Lucia’s firm, Grathwol and his wife, Sandra, a former schoolteacher, invested $300,000 of retirement savings into non-traded real estate investment trusts. These REITs, which invest in property such as apartments and shopping centers, aren’t traded on a public exchange, which means they can’t easily be sold.

Finra Alert

An alert on the Finra Web site warns that non-traded REITs are hard to cash in, may not be a diversified real estate investment and that commissions and other expenses can be as much as 15 percent.

Grathwol said his REITs’ value fell by $100,000. “We were depending on it as our life’s savings,” said Grathwol, 69.

The couple has filed an arbitration claim against San Diego-based First Allied Securities Inc., which acted as broker for Lucia’s firm.

In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division moved to bar Lucia from the industry for allegedly misleading investors about the historical performance of the strategy he was promoting. Lucia has appealed. Marc Fagel, an attorney for Lucia, declined to comment because Grathwol’s complaint is still in arbitration.

Joseph Kuo, a First Allied spokesman, also said the company doesn’t comment on pending arbitration cases, while noting Lucia is no longer affiliated with the brokerage. In a filing responding to the allegations, First Allied said they were “baseless,” because the REITs were “only one part of a layered investment strategy” and the Grathwols were fully informed of the risks.

Employees at AT&T faced similar quandaries about where to entrust their savings.

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