SEC charges New York rep with stealing $2.4M from elderly client

investmentnews.com:

The SEC has filed charges against a registered representative for allegedly stealing more than $2 million from a client and using the proceeds to finance the financial advisor’s personal spending.

In a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that from December 2021 through March 2022, Clarice Saw misappropriated approximately $2.4 million from an elderly client.

Saw was working at Cetera Investment Advisers and Cetera Investment Services in Flushing, New York, during the time frame cited in the complaint, which did not name her employer.

The SEC claims that Saw used deception to obtain a power of attorney from the client, whom she first started working with in July 2020 when she was at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York City.

While at Cetera, Saw falsified internal records, liquidated all of the customer’s securities holdings without his authorization and transferred all of the customer’s holdings to her personal bank and brokerage accounts without the customer’s authorization, the SEC alleged.

“Saw used a portion of the misappropriated funds to pay for her personal expenses, including approximately $100,000 in car and mortgage payments and thousands of dollars of cash withdrawals,” the SEC complaint states. “Saw used additional misappropriated funds to purchase securities in her name in her personal brokerage accounts.”

The SEC said it will seek in court to enjoin Saw from violating the laws she broke, disgorge the money she allegedly stole and pay a civil monetary penalty.

Saw, who lives in Pleasantville, New York, declined to talk to InvestmentNews when she was reached through her current firm, CoastalOne.

“I have an