I wonder if I qualify as one of the mutual fund investors who lost money in the mutual fund trading scandal that took place about 10 years ago. I remember the noise about it and I remember that I had money in some of the funds involved. What remains to be seen is whether I had enough to warrant any kind of payback for their mismanagement of my money.

The mutual fund rapid trading scandal took place in 1990s and early 2000s. The fund managers involved with the scandal allowed certain traders to buy and sell their funds in the same fashion as day traders. These traders were taking advantage of small discrepancies between the mutual funds' net asset value and their underlying basket of stocks' value. The result for ordinary mutual fund account holders like you and me were lower net asset values in the mutual fund shares we held.

Millions of investors lost money to these guys. Dozens of mutual fund companies were cheating their customers. In total, over $3 billion in restitution has been collected from fund companies, their executive staff members and big investors who broke trading rules to profit at the expense of regular investors like you and me.

Who gets money back? The biggest offenders were Invesco, Janus and Bank of America. They will be paying out $671Million, $375M and $225M respectively. In all there were 22 companies involved in the mutual fund rapid trading scandal. Here's the most recent list:

Alliance Capital Management
American Express Financial
Banc of America
Bear, Stearns
CIBC World Markets
Columbia Management
Federated Securities
Franklin Templeton
Fred Alger Management
Invesco Funds Group
Janus Capital Management
Massachusetts Financial Services
Millenium Partners
PA Fund Management (PIMCO)
Pilgrim Baxter & Associates
Prudential Securities
Putnam Investments
Strong Capital
Veras Capital Master Fund
Waddell & Reed

Personally, at the time I had funds invested with at least three of the firms mentioned above.

If you'd like to find out more about the mutual funds rapid trading scandal you can either go to the SEC and sift through tons of legal documents (not advisable) or you can take advantage of the work someone else has already done reading through it and netting out the important bits. That someone is The Coalition of Mutual Fund Investors. You can get the latest PDF report on which companies have paid restitution and where all of these mutual fund companies are in the restitution process here.