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Regulation and Compliance > Litigation

Advisor Pleads Guilty to Bilking 45 Clients in Cherry-Picking Scheme  

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A Greenwich, Connecticut financial advisor waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding over 45 clients out of more than $2.7 million combined as part of a “cherry-picking” securities scheme, according to court documents and the Justice Department.

Jonathan Vincent Glenn, 54, who owned the firm Glenn Capital in Greenwich, pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud.

Ththe charge carries a maximum prison term of 25 years and a fine of up to about $5.4 million, Vanessa Roberts Avery, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and Robert Fuller, special agent in charge of the New Haven Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced Friday.

Glenn was released, pending sentencing, which is scheduled for Dec. 28, the Justice Department said.

“Cherry-picking” is a fraudulent securities trading practice in which the perpetrator executes trades without assigning those trades to a particular trading account until he or she determines whether or not the trade has become profitable or suffered losses, the Justice Department explained in the announcement.

The responsible individual then allocates trades that were profitable to favored accounts (often the individual’s own accounts) and assigns unprofitable trades to disfavored client accounts.

Through Glenn Capital, Glenn offered his clients portfolio management services including asset allocation and asset selection. He managed all of Glenn Capital’s advisory clients’ accounts and was authorized to make trading decisions on each client’s behalf without seeking approval for each trade, according to the Justice Department.

Glenn placed trades on behalf of clients, himself or family members by trading directly in the relevant individual account, or by placing block trades in Glenn Capital’s omnibus account and allocating block trades among relevant individual accounts.

In pleading guilty, Glenn admitted he defrauded clients by retroactively allocating profitable omnibus-account trades to favored clients, family and personal accounts, and unprofitable omnibus-account trades to non-favored-client accounts, the Justice Department said.

Despite the requirements set forth in his company’s Code of Ethics, Glenn did not determine the allocation of block trades until after they were executed, when he knew if the trades were profitable or not.

Glenn did not tell his clients he was “cherry picking” and instead gave the false impression that he allocated trades fairly and according to a predetermined allocation methodology, the Justice Department said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission settled fraud charges with Glenn and his firm in September. According to the SEC, the block trades he made as part of the scheme were between “at least January 2020 and March 2022,” apparently after he stopped serving as a broker for various firms.

Before starting his own firm, Glenn was a broker for firms including Wells Fargo most recently, from 2013 to 2018, according to his report on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck website. Before that, he was a broker for firms including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and UBS.

Glenn was barred from the industry in September, according to his report.

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