Former Morgan Stanley Adviser Pleads Guilty to Taking Client Data
September 21 2015 - 3:40PM
Dow Jones News
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
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2015 15:25 ET (19:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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