SEC Bars Former J.P. Morgan Advisor

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that they have accepted an offer of settlement from former advisor Alaa Ahmad.

Between approximately 2012 and 2017, Alaa Ahmad, formerly an advisor at a branch of J.P. Morgan Securities LLC in Queens, New York, supposedly used his position at the bank to target “high-dollar value” customer accounts of elderly or deceased individuals that had been dormant for a period of time.

After identifying these accounts, Ahmad reportedly passed the account information, as well as the personal identifying information of the account holders, to another co-conspirator, Moustafa Ayoub. Ayoub used the account information to transfer nearly $7 million of victim funds from JPMorgan Chase accounts to other financial accounts controlled by Ayoub.

On April 29, 2021, Ahmad pled guilty to bank fraud conspiracy and conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

According to the SEC, between October 2014 and April 2017, Ahmad “did knowingly and intentionally conspire to execute a scheme and artifice to defraud … to obtain moneys, funds, credits, assets and other property … by means of one or more materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises …” that resulted in the misappropriation of funds from customers’ bank accounts.

The SEC has barred Ahmad from association with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, municipal securities dealer, municipal advisor, transfer agent, or nationally recognized statistical rating organization and barred from participating in any offering of a penny stock.

Prior to working for J.P. Morgan, Ahmad was an advisor at Chase Investment Services Corp. for three years.

Ayoub previously pleaded guilty in January 2021 to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and aggravated identity theft.

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