A former broker who served as the office manager and compliance officer for a Buffalo investment firm has been sentenced to three years in prison for robbing the firm and clients of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.
Jennifer Campbell, 48, of Niagara Falls, who pleaded guilty to the charges in November, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo to pay restitution totaling $371,332.11.
Between November 2018 and May 2021, prosecutors said Campbell stole more than $500,000 from several clients and from the firm itself, primarily by writing checks from client accounts, forging the signatures of either the client or a principal at the firm, and then depositing the checks into her own personal account.
Campbell’s employer was not identified in the court document or in the SEC complaint, but at the time of the complaint last June, Kevin Keenan a spokesman for Pratt Collard Buck Advisory Group in Buffalo, confirmed that the firm was the RIA that employed Campbell.
She was hired in March 2017 as the office manager, where she communicated with clients and had access to their accounts, according to the SEC. She was appointed CCO in September 2018, serving as the point person for compliance review and programs.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office cited several ways in which Campbell concealed her theft. “In one instance, she sent a victim a falsified account statement that purported to show an account balance of approximately $148,000, when in fact the account at the time had a balance of only $93. In another instance, Campbell took funds from a client and transferred them to the bank account of one of her earlier victims. Finally, Campbell gained access to the email accounts of the firm’s principals and diverted emails that they received from anti-money laundering and financial crimes personnel at the firm’s broker-dealer, who had begun to raise questions about some of the transactions that Campbell had engaged in.”
“In an effort to put off these inquiries, Campbell sent several emails using the email account of a firm principal. In these emails, Campbell made various false statements and submitted fake documentation in an effort to make the transactions appear legitimate,” prosecutors said.
The SEC complaint said Campbell also intercepted telephone calls from the broker-dealer personnel when they attempted to continue to reach the firm. She even used voice-altering software to impersonate one of the firm’s principals when speaking by phone to an anti-money laundering (AML) officer from the broker-dealer, the complaint said.
Campbell, who holds Series 7 and Series 63 securities licenses, began working in the industry in 2006 with Harold C. Brown & Co. LLC in Buffalo, according to BrokerCheck. She moved to Girard Securities Inc. in 2012 and spent less than a year before joining Wells Fargo Advisors. She left in 2015 and was not registered when she joined Pratt Collard Buck Advisory Group.