By Justin Baer

A former Morgan Stanley financial adviser pleaded guilty Monday to accessing client data and taking it home with him.

Federal prosecutors charged Galen Marsh, who was fired by the Wall Street firm in January after some of the information appeared online with an offer to sell a bigger cache, with one count of exceeding authorized access to a computer.

According to court documents, Mr. Marsh allegedly made more than 5,000 unauthorized searches of confidential client information on the firm's computer systems using the identification numbers of other Morgan Stanley branches, groups and advisers, beginning in June 2011. He uploaded the data, which included client names, addresses, account numbers and investment information, to a personal server in his New Jersey home, the prosecutors alleged.

Prosecutors said he accessed the information "to use for his personal advantage as a private wealth management adviser," noting he had discussions about potential jobs with at least two Morgan Stanley competitors between October 2013 and last December.

"Morgan Stanley appreciates the efforts by the U.S. Attorney's Office and FBI that have led to the guilty plea of Galen Marsh," Morgan Stanley said in a statement. "This action, which follows Morgan Stanley's initial investigation and reporting of his misconduct, makes clear that misuse of client account information will not be tolerated. "

The guilty plea didn't explain how details related to 1,200 clients appeared on Pastebin, a text-sharing website, in December--or how other details surfaced elsewhere online in early 2015, including on Twitter.

"Mr. Marsh is an outstanding young man who made a mistake by accessing information from his firm's computers," Mr. Marsh's lawyer said. "His plea today, however, clearly shows and establishes that Mr. Marsh never sold, never disclosed and never posted any confidential information on the Internet. The truth is that the Internet disclosures were the result of outside hackers, and he had absolutely no knowledge of that, nor anything to do with that."

Write to Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 21, 2015 14:20 ET (18:20 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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