A former Wells Fargo and LPL Monetary funding advisor will spend greater than three years in federal jail after pleading responsible to stealing greater than $600,000 from shoppers.
Mario Rivero, an Elizabeth, New Jersey, advisor with 10 years of business expertise, was sentenced in federal court docket in Newark to 42 months behind bars and three years of supervised launch for operating a rip-off that disadvantaged 5 shoppers of $626,478. Rivero, who was at Wells Fargo from 2010 to 2020, pleaded responsible on Feb. 2 to 2 counts of wire and securities fraud.
Rivero admitted to taking shoppers’ cash that he had ostensibly promised to place into funding funds and as an alternative used it for journey, playing and paying private bills. Authorities accused him of defrauding each aged and disabled shoppers.
The wire and safety expenses he confronted carried a most of 20 years in jail every and $6 million in fines in whole. Rivero is individually the topic of a civil criticism the Securities and Alternate Fee filed in March 2022 over his half in the identical rip-off.
In accordance with the Monetary Business Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck database, Rivero was barred from the brokerage business on June 4, 2021, after which barred by the SEC on March 28 this yr. After leaving Wells Fargo in 2020, he labored for about eight months at LPL Monetary.
Learn extra: Prudential shifting 2,600 monetary advisors to LPL
A spokesperson for Wells Fargo mentioned, “At Wells Fargo we maintain our workers to the best moral requirements. Wells Fargo introduced Mr. Rivero’s conduct to the eye of regulation enforcement, and we’ve reimbursed affected shoppers.”
Makes an attempt to achieve LPL Monetary weren’t instantly profitable.
