{"id":47574,"date":"2015-04-23T07:27:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/?p=47574"},"modified":"2019-04-09T14:49:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T18:49:04","slug":"ny-financial-advisor-charged-with-stealing-20-million-from-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/04\/2015\/ny-financial-advisor-charged-with-stealing-20-million-from-customers.html","title":{"rendered":"NY Financial Advisor Charged With Stealing $20 Million From Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nNew York (HedgeCo.Net) \u00a0– The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against a New York City-based financial advisor accused of stealing at least $20 million from customers to fund his own brokerage accounts and then squandering the bulk of the money in highly unprofitable options trading.<\/p>\n

The SEC alleges that Michael J. Oppenheim abused his position as a private client advisor at a global bank and persuaded some customers to withdraw millions of dollars out of their accounts by promising he would purchase safe and secure municipal bonds on their behalf.\u00a0 Instead, Oppenheim bought himself cashier\u2019s checks and deposited them into his own brokerage account or his wife\u2019s account that he controlled.\u00a0 Almost immediately after each theft and deposit, Oppenheim allegedly embarked on sizeable trading of stocks and options including Tesla, Apple, Google, and Netflix.\u00a0 Oppenheim typically lost the entire amount of each deposit, and his brokerage accounts currently show minimal cash balances.\u00a0 On occasions when his accounts did have positive cash balances, he allegedly wired money to bank accounts in his or his wife\u2019s name.\u00a0 At least one outgoing wire was used to pay off a portion of his mortgage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe allege that Oppenheim promised his customers that he would invest their money in safe and secure investments, but he seized their funds and aggressively played the stock market in his own accounts,\u201d said Amelia A. Cottrell, Associate Director of the SEC\u2019s New York Regional Office.<\/p>\n

In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of New York today announced criminal charges against Oppenheim.<\/p>\n

According to the SEC\u2019s complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, Oppenheim took illicit steps to conceal his fraud.\u00a0 For instance, Oppenheim created false account statements when a customer asked for a statement reflecting his municipal bond holdings.\u00a0 Oppenheim simply pasted the customer\u2019s name onto an account statement reflecting the holdings of another customer, and provided the fabricated statement to convince the customer that he had purchased the municipal bonds for his account as promised. \u00a0In another instance, Oppenheim transferred money from one customer to another to replenish the amounts he had stolen earlier.<\/p>\n

The SEC\u2019s complaint charges Oppenheim, who lives in Livingston, N.J., with violations of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 as well as Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.\u00a0 The SEC\u2019s complaint seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest and financial penalties as well as permanent injunctions barring future violations.\u00a0 The SEC\u2019s complaint against Oppenheim names his wife Alexandra Oppenheim as a relief defendant for the purpose of recovering any customer funds transferred to her.<\/p>\n

The SEC\u2019s investigation, which is continuing, is being conducted by William Martin, Nancy Brown, Neil Hendelman, and Charles Riely of the New York Regional Office.\u00a0 The case is being supervised by Amelia A. Cottrell, and the SEC\u2019s litigation will be led by Nancy Brown and William Martin.\u00a0 The New York Regional Office\u2019s broker-dealer examination team of Michael Kress, Jennifer Fournier, and Ronald Sukhu assisted the investigation.\u00a0 The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of New York, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.<\/p>\n

Editing by Alex Akesson
\nFor HedgeCo.net<\/a>
\nalex@hedgeco.net<\/a>
\nHedgeCo.Net<\/a> is a premier hedge fund database<\/a> and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership in HedgeCo.net<\/a> is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York (HedgeCo.Net) \u00a0– The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against a New York City-based financial advisor accused of stealing at least $20 million from customers to fund his own brokerage accounts and then squandering the bulk of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedge-fund-fraud","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47574"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68784,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47574\/revisions\/68784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}