A former collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) bond trader was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for engaging in a fraudulent trading scheme in which he manipulated the prices of CMOs by millions of dollars over a period of four years, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Douglas Green, 50, of Boca Raton, Florida, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson to one count of securities fraud. Judge Wolfson imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
From May 2004 through June 2008, Green was a registered representative associated with Crocker Securities, a broker dealer that used the clearing services of Pershing LLC. Pershing, which is based in Jersey City, New Jersey, is one of the largest clearing firms in the United States. As Crocker’s clearing firm, Pershing received payments and securities from Crocker and handled record-keeping for the securities Crocker controlled.
Green traded a Crocker account on behalf of the firm. In June 2004, the account Green managed suffered significant trading losses, which continued to grow during the length of the fraudulent scheme. To conceal the losses, Green entered into fraudulent transactions designed to increase the price of the CMOs to correspond to and cover the increasing losses in the Crocker trading account.
Green admitted that to manipulate the price of the CMO he entered a fraudulent sale into Pershing’s trading system. As the settlement date of the trade approached, Green cancelled the fraudulent sale so it would not actually settle and thereby alert Pershing and the purported purchasers, who were unaware they were identified in the fake transaction.
Green also manipulated the price of the CMOs using a network of bond traders. The traders purchased the CMOs at Green’s direction and immediately sold them back to him at slightly elevated prices. As a result of Green’s fraudulent trading activity, the total price of the CMOs was artificially inflated by millions of dollars. When the scheme collapsed, Pershing lost millions of dollars when it was forced to liquidate the CMO positions in the Crocker account.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Wolfson sentenced Green to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $9.2 million in restitution.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent-in-Charge Aaron Ford, for the investigation which led to today’s sentence. He also thanked the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for its assistance in the investigation.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul A. Murphy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.
This case was brought in coordination with President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The task force was established to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. With more than 20 federal agencies, 94 U.S. Attorneys’ offices and state and local partners, it’s the broadest coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies ever assembled to combat fraud. Since its formation, the task force has made great strides in facilitating increased investigation and prosecution of financial crimes; enhancing coordination and cooperation among federal, state and local authorities; addressing discrimination in the lending and financial markets and conducting outreach to the public, victims, financial institutions and other organizations. Over the past three fiscal years, the Justice Department has filed nearly 10,000 financial fraud cases against nearly 15,000 defendants including more than 2,900 mortgage fraud defendants. For more information on the task force, please visit www.stopfraud.gov .
