Former Puerto Rico financial advisor pleads guilty to bank fraud
WASHINGTON, USA — A former registered financial advisor previously employed by UBS Financial Services Inc. of Puerto Rico (UBS-PR) pleaded guilty on Friday for his role in a scheme to fraudulently obtain and misuse non-purpose credit lines for purchasing securities, resulting in over $1 million in improperly generated commissions.
José G. Ramirez-Arone Jr., 60, currently of Fulton, Maryland, previously of San Juan, Puerto Rico, pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud before US District Judge Thomas Hogan of the District of Columbia. Sentencing has been scheduled for February 8, 2019, before Judge Hogan.
As part of his guilty plea, Ramirez-Arone admitted that, in his role as a financial advisor, he participated in a scheme in which various of his clients at UBS-PR fraudulently obtained non-purpose credit lines (i.e., credit lines for which purchasing securities was expressly prohibited by an internal UBS-PR policy) offered by UBS Bank USA (UBS-UT), a Utah-based subsidiary of UBS Financial Services, Inc. He admitted knowing that his clients then misused them by drawing funds from the credit lines for purchasing securities, directly violating the credit lines’ terms of use.
Ramirez-Arone further admitted that the scheme took advantage of the low interest rate of UBS-UT’s non-purpose credit lines, and the payout interest rate of closed-end funds (CEFs) offered by UBS-PR, which were mainly comprised of Puerto Rican bonds.
Read more: https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/11/16/former-puerto-rico-financial-advisor-pleads-guilty-to-bank-fraud/