CEO Of Collapsed Brokerage Firm Unable To Conceal Sense Of Pride In Explaining How High-Level Scam Went Down

Author:: Bess Levin
Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Jul 13, 2012

"The forgeries started nearly twenty years ago and have gone undetected until now. I was able to conceal my crime of forgery by being the sole individual with access to the US Bank accounts held by PFG. No one else in the company ever saw an actual US Bank statement. The Bank statements were always delivered directly to me when they arrived in the mail. I made counterfeit statements within a few hours of receiving the actual statements and gave the forgeries to the accounting department.” Using a combination of Photo Shop, Excel, scanners, and both laser and ink jet printers I was able to make very convincing forgeries of nearing every document that came from the Bank. I could create forgeries very quickly so no one suspected that my forgeries were not the real thing that had just arrived in the mail." [WSJ]

Remember Russell Wasendorf? CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group? Dirty blonde hair, about yea high? Opened his (attempted) suicide note with the words "I have committed fraud" and then went on to detail said fraud, writing: "Through a scheme of using false bank statements I have been able to embezzle millions of dollars from customer accounts at Peregrine Financial Group, Inc. The forgeries started nearly twenty years ago and have gone undetected until now. I was able to conceal my crime of forgery by being the sole individual with access to the US Bank accounts held by PFG. No one else in the company ever saw an actual US Bank statement.The Bank statements were always delivered directly to me when they arrived in the mail. I made counterfeit statements within a few hours of receiving the actual statements and gave the forgeries to the accounting department.” Using a combination of Photo Shop, Excel, scanners, and both laser and ink jet printers I was able to make very convincing forgeries of nearing every document that came from the Bank. I could create forgeries very quickly so no one suspected that my forgeries were not the real thing that had just arrived in the mail." ...apparently he was just kidding about all that and/or intended it to be read in more of an If I Did It style. The chief executive of Peregrine Financial Group Inc. on Friday pleaded not guilty to all 31 charges he faced of misleading federal market authorities as part of a long-running alleged fraud. Russell Wasendorf Sr., the head of the collapsed U.S. futures and currency brokerage, was formally charged this past week with 31 counts of misleading regulators, offenses that carry a maximum sentence of 155 years. It is one of the heaviest penalties sought in the wake of the last financial crisis. No further questions. Peregrine's Wasendorf Pleads Not Guilty [WSJ]

Over the past several years, much has been made about the supposed incompetence of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulator failed to realize Bernie Madoff had been running an illegitimate Ponzi scheme, despite more or less being told by Bernie Madoff himself, "I am running an illegitimate Ponzi scheme." It went after David Einhorn, when it should have been going after Allied Capital, the company the hedge fund manager told them was committing fraud. Its proposal for stepping up investigators' games was to start a Fraud College.* Until recently, it employed individuals in the office responsible for "ensuring exchanges follow guidelines concerning...computer audits, security, and capacity" who had "little or no experience with exchange technical matters." At this point, there have been so many stories about the SEC getting things wrong that the default is to assume it fucked up, even when that is not actually the case. What's more, even when Team Schapiro is on top of its game, resources are so strained that many scams that should be caught fall through the cracks. So you can maybe understand why a group of "high school buddies," along with a few other guys they picked up along the way, who were engaging in securities fraud, weren't too worried about getting caught.