Ex-Rep for Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo Sentenced to 30 Months for Fraud

A former Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo broker was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison for defrauding his clients out of more than $1.6 million, according to court documents.

The sentence was handed down by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. The broker, Elias Herbert Hafen, was also ordered to pay $745,000 in restitution and to forfeit $806,750.

“At Wells Fargo Advisors we hold our advisors to the highest professional standards,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jackie Knolhoff told ThinkAdvisor on Friday. “The advisor involved in this matter is no longer with the firm,” she noted. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Hafen was affiliated with Morgan Stanley from 2009 to 2018, and then joined Wells Fargo in 2018, according to his profile on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck website. Wells Fargo, however, terminated him Aug. 21, 2018, after Hafen “admitted to entering into financial arrangements with clients that were not approved by the firm,” according to a disclosure on his BrokerCheck profile.

Hafen was guilty of defrauding at least 11 of his clients and their family members by “inducing” the victims to “wire money” to Hafen’s personal bank account based on his “false and misleading representations that the money was to be invested in securities,” Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, had claimed.