Ex-Morgan Stanley Financial Adviser Sentenced

A federal judge sentenced a Hoboken financial adviser to three years of probation on Tuesday for illegally acquiring confidential client information from banking giant Morgan Stanley.

Galen Marsh, 31, must also pay $600,000 in restitution to his former employer and forfeit certain computer hardware that he used in the commission of the offense, authorities stated.

According to the FBI, Marsh was employed in the private wealth management division of Morgan Stanley, initially as a Customer Service Associate (“CSA”) and then as a Financial Advisor (“FA”).

In that capacity, Marsh worked as part of a group of CSAs and FAs at Morgan Stanley’s Manhattan office, which provided financial and investment services to particular private wealth management clients.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office (NJ), Marsh conducted a total of approximately 6,000 unauthorized searches in the bank’s computer systems, and illegally acquired data including names, addresses, telephone numbers, account numbers, fixed-income investment information and account values from about 730,000 client accounts.

Marsh then uploaded the data to servers on his home computer and used it for his personal advantage, prosecutors stated.

In addition, from October of 2013 to December of 2014, Marsh engaged in talks regarding potential employment with two of the bank’s competitors.

The New York Times reported that in December, Marsh was named as the source behind an attempt to sell six million account records at Morgan Stanley - including passwords and login data – on the Internet site Pastebin.com.

He was fired shortly after the data dump, the Times reported.

In January, Marsh’s attorney told Bloomberg Business that his client “did not sell nor ever intend to sell any account information whatsoever.