An irreverent Wall Street Blog
Bank Employee Charged With Illegal Access of 730,000 Accounts
October 7, 2015
When we provide our confidential
information to a bank, we hope that it's kept safe. Notwithstanding our hopes,
however, the headlines are filled with stories about identity theft and hacking
-- and it's not a problem likely to go away any time soon. Recently, the Feds
charged another financial services industry employee with taking wrongly taking
information pertaining to hundreds of thousands of
accounts.
Case In
Point
On September 21, 2015, Galen
Marsh, 31, Hoboken, NJ, pled guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a
computer in the Southern District of New York. A criminal Information charged Marsh with having
obtained confidential client information from his employer, which is
characterized in Department of Justice press releases only as "a
multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in
Manhattan (the "Bank")." About 730,000 accounts were invaded pursuant to
Marsh's scheme.
SIDE BAR: Although not disclosed in the Information or Department of Justice press releases, online records at FINRA's BrokerCheck as of October 7, 2015, disclose that on January 2, 2015, Morgan Stanley "Discharged" Galen J. Marsh based upon allegations that:MR. MARSH WAS DISCHARGED FOLLOWING ALLEGATIONS THAT ACCUSED HIM OF REMOVING CERTAIN CONFIDENTIAL CLIENT ACCOUNT INFORMATION FROM THE FIRM WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION
A Group
Thug?As detailed in the Information,
Marsh was initially employed by the Bank as a Customer Service
Associate ("CSA") and thereafter as a Financial Advisor ("FA")
- and he was assigned to specific Groups tasked with servicing specified
accounts.. In his CSA and FA capacities, he provided financial services to
certain private wealth management clients. The Bank, maintained on its computer
systems information that included the private wealth clients' fixed income
holdings and the revenue generated and value of each
account.The Information asserts that
although Marsh was authorized to access such information with respect to
private wealth management clients within his assigned Group, he was generally
prohibited from accessing the computer system regarding accounts outside his
Group. Each computer system access required the input of unique user
Identification Numbers to access his Group's account
information.
for his personal advantage as a private wealth management advisor at the Bank. In addition, from at least in or about October 2013 through in or about December 2014, MARSH was engaged in discussions regarding potential employment with two other financial institutions that are competitors of the Bank.
Marsh faces a maximum of five
years in prison and three years of supervised
release.
READ the FULL
TEXT
Information