Galen Marsh, a former financial advisor with Morgan Stanley in New York, has pled guilty to charges that he illegally accessed personal information about hundreds of thousands of the firm’s clients. He is to be sentenced on Dec. 7 and faces up to five years in prison on the charge.
According to the allegations against Marsh and statements made at the plea hearing from June 2011 through December 2014, he used the bank’s computer systems to access confidential information about clients served by advisors outside of his group.
Marsh allegedly used the identification numbers of other bank branches, groups and advisors to conduct approximately 6,000 unauthorized searches. He allegedly obtained confidential information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, fixed-income investment information and account values of approximately 730,000 clients at the bank, which he uploaded to a personal server at his home in New Jersey.
Authorities say that Marsh was engaged in discussions regarding potential employment with two other financial services institutions when he was accessing the client information illegally.
“Galen Marsh has admitted that he accessed confidential and private account information of hundreds of thousands of his employer’s clients without authorization and to use it for his personal advantage. Accessing such confidential information through a bank’s computer systems is a federal crime and one to which Marsh has now pled guilty,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.