May 15, 2017

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged James Im and Kee Chan a pair of former head traders who ran the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) desk at Nomura Securities International Inc. with deliberately lying to customers in order to inflate the profits of the CMBS desk and line their own pockets as a result. The SEC alleges that Im and Chan each misrepresented price information while acting as intermediaries on trades with Nomura’s customers who sought to buy and sell CMBS on the secondary market.  In certain instances, Im and Chan allegedly pretended they were still negotiating bond purchases with a third-party seller at higher prices when Nomura had already acquired the bonds at a lower price. The SEC alleges that in one instance, Im bragged about his purposeful deception of a customer, and Chan once altered an email to a customer to prop up his lie about the bid price for a bond.  According to the SEC’s complaints, Chan and Im fraudulently generated more than $750,000 in extra trading profits for the CMBS desk, and they received substantial bonuses based largely on the desk’s performance. SEC

Tagged in: Housing and Mortgage Fraud, Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,