The SEC announced that a final judgment was entered against a former Registered Rep of the Maxim Group who repeatedly cheated an institutional customer of profitable trades.  The judgment, entered by a federal judge in New York, among other things, ordered RR Jose Vianna to pay over $480K in disgorgement, prejudgment interest and civil penalties. 

The SEC complaint alleged that, between July 2007 and March 2008, RR Vianna diverted profitable trades from the account of a large Spanish bank ("Customer A") to the account of another company, BVI relief defendant Creswell Equities.  Vianna simultaneously entered orders in the accounts of Customer A and Creswell to trade the same amounts of the same stock.  Each time, he placed a buy order in one customer’s account and a sell order in the other customer’s account.  When the market moved to make Customer A’s trade profitable and Creswell’s trade unprofitable, Vianna improperly misused his access to Maxim’s order management system to divert Customer A’s profitable trade to Creswell by changing Maxim’s records to switch the identity of buyer and seller to the trade.

Creswell Equities, a relief defendant, previously agreed to pay nearly $1.7 million in disgorgement to settle SEC’s claim against it.   This is SEC v. Jose O. Vianna, Jr. and Creswell Equities, Inc., Case No. 10.   [SEC Litigation Rel. 21905, 3/28/11]