SEC, DOJ both accuse former UBS representative of stealing $5.8 million
According to the Securities and Exchange, a Fla.-based former dual registrar for UBS Financial Services took nearly money from one client, using the money to purchase gifts for multiple romantic partners and to pay for money taken from a different client. Stolen $6 million. Committee.
Both the SEC and the Justice Department simultaneously filed charges against German Nino, a former registered representative with UBS, who operated out of a UBS branch office in Miami. According to court filings, Nino has eight counts of wire fraud.
Nino was with UBS from 2012 to 2020, According to their FINRA BrokerCheck page, with stints at HSBC Securities and Merrill Lynch over the past several years, among others. At UBS, Nino worked as a financial advisor to an unnamed high-net-worth couple with investments of approximately $11 million. From 2014, Nino began making unauthorized wire transfers from the couple’s accounts, According to the complaint of the SEC,
According to the commission, at times, Nino would liquidate the victim’s securities simultaneously at the time of the wire transfer, and she kept these allegedly stolen funds in a separate bank account from her matrimonial accounts. Nino reportedly continued to take money from the victims’ accounts through February. 2020, spending approximately $1.2 million to repay the previous victim.
He spent $4.6 million on several women he had romantic relationships with, using it to buy small gifts and vacations, luxury cars, private school tuition, and an apartment in Columbia. To hide the alleged fraud, Nino regularly met with clients, and provided false information about their investment performance, account balances and rates of return. He failed to inform them about the wire transfer he had done.
In cases where he transferred more than $100,000 out of the account, Nino allegedly forged his clients’ letters of authorization for UBS, and tampered with the firm’s records to ensure that clients could not make suspicious transfers. No email notification has been received about According to the DOJ, Nino also created a fake land purchase contract with forged signatures to make it appear as if the unnamed investor was buying land in Colombia.
In early 2020, the invested couple’s son began finding discrepancies in one of his accounts and confronted Nino about suspicious balances. Nino eventually confesses that he stole the money, telling the client’s son that he would pay back the damaged couple using the signing bonus he received from joining a new firm. After Son reportedly told UBS about Nino’s conduct, investigators asked Nino to appear for an interview. In response, Nino resigned, according to the SEC (an attorney representing Nino at this week’s proceedings did not comment).
The SEC also filed in Florida federal court and is seeking injunctive relief against Nino, as well as incarceration, prejudice interest, and civil penalties.
