Amerindo's Alberto Vilar gave only some investors preference when it came to dealing out shares of hot initial public offerings, reports the Wall Street Journal.

According to an Amerindo regulatory filing reported by the Journal, Vilar had a strange allocation system for much-in-demand IPO shares. Amerindo Investment Advisers only allowed some of its wealthy individual offshore clients to invest in hot dot com initial public offerings in the late 1990s, while preventing those IPO shares to go towards Amerindo's Technology Fund.

Vilar is currently battling charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and investment adviser fraud; it is unclear if the IPO policy is included in the allegations. Co-founder Gary Tanaka, who is scheduled to appear for a detention hearing on Friday morning in lower Manhattan, has been charged with wire fraud.

The firm stated in the filing that the offshore investors had a higher risk tolerance and therefore were more suited to invest in the IPOs, whereas the firm marketed its Technology Fund as a product that would buy post-IPO shares to avoid "hot-money" investors, the Journal reported William Smith, Amerindo spokesman, as saying.

Smith also told the Journal that the firm did not receive enough shares of hot IPOs to give access to all clients.

According to the Journal, the firm's IPO policy was disclosed in SEC documents and reviewed by the agency.  

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