An ex-Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab broker was arrested on April 5 in Seminole County, Florida on charges of possessing child pornography, according to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
Randall Brian Kiefner, age 61, was approached by detectives at his residence in Apopka, Fla., and later charged with 21 counts of obscene possession material, including possession of material depicting child pornography.
According to the sheriff’s office, its Crimes Against Children Unit had been acting on a tip that Yahoo Inc. had reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about 12 emails with video attachments sent to addresses Kiefner controlled. The videos allegedly contained children under 12 committing sexual acts.
According to the arrest report, Kiefner allegedly told the detectives who approached him on April 5 that his Yahoo account had been blocked in December 2021 after he attempted to transfer files from his phone to his Yahoo email.
The police report also claims that when Kiefner was confronted with the titles of the videos, he supposedly admitted to viewing the contents on Tumblr and sharing videos on other applications. The sheriff’s report said Kiefner submitted to a voluntary search and that a vault of 300 photos was found containing images of prepubescent females engaging in sexual acts and that these had been shared by such applications as Wickr Me, Telegram, Session, Wire and Photo Vault.
The report suggested that Kiefner admitted to having a child porn addiction and preferring females from age 11 to 14.
According to the arrest report, the bond was set at $735,000 in total for the 21 charges, at $35,000 apiece. The sheriff's office lists him as still in custody.
The detectives said in the report that Kiefner told them his pornography addiction had begun four years ago when he lost his job.
Kiefner was fired from Morgan Stanley after only six days in 2019, shortly after the firm had lured him and another advisor from Charles Schwab. After accusations of poaching, Schwab took Morgan Stanley, Kiefner and the other advisor into an arbitration proceeding under the auspices of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
A Finra panel ordered Morgan Stanley and the advisors to shell out $7.293 million to Schwab, but Kiefner and his partner prevailed in a cross-claim that Morgan Stanley had failed to protect them from legal liability. The advisors won $4.7 million from Morgan Stanley. Kiefner by himself won $1.17 million in compensatory damages, in addition to attorney’s fees and costs.
A call to Kiefner’s attorney was not returned by press time.