J.P.Morgan Securities has requested a temporary restraining order against a former private client advisor that the firm said is aggressively soliciting former clients to join him at his new firm.
Andrew Koleno of Mokena, Ill. had been working at a JPMorgan affiliate in Tinley Park, Ill. until he announced his resignation in November to join Professional Wealth Advisors, the Downers Grove, Ill.-based wealth management team of LPL Financial.
After he left, he immediately began to solicit JPMorgan's clients in violation of the various agreements he signed with the firm, J.P, Morgan said in its restraining order request, which was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division on Thursday.
At the time of his departure, Koleno was managing about 500 JPMorgan clients/households with more than $200 million in total assets under supervision, the firm said. It accused him of convincing 39 households with assets totaling more than $19 million over to LPL.
Clients reported to JPMorgan that Koleno made contact with them after he had left the firm asking to schedule a meeting with him at his new firm, the court documents said. In many cases, Koleno had not recruited those clients when he was at JPMorgan but were given to him by the firm, the documents said. About a third of his customers had been with JPMorgan for at least 30 years, the firm said.
“The vast majority of the clients Koleno serviced at JPMorgan were pre-existing JPMorgan clients who were reassigned to Koleno, were long-term Chase Bank clients who were referred to Koleno or were developed by JPMorgan at the time they were assigned to Koleno,” court documents said.
Koleno promised the JPMorgan clients that he could offer better rates and products at LPL than they could at JPMorgan, according to the documents. He even bad-mouthed his former firm, claiming that he was limited on what he could do there due to restrictions and that the advisors replacing him were just out of college and inexperienced, the firm said in the court documents.
The solicitations began before he left, and a few customers reported to JPMorgan that Koleno reached out to them using his cell phone and telling them that if they wished to get in touch with him in the future to reach him at that number, the firm said.
Through his time with JPMorgan, Koleno signed numerous confidentiality agreements, which the firm said he violated when he reached out to his former clients after his departure.
“Defendant entered into multiple, virtually identical agreements with JPMorgan or its predecessors during his employment that contain provisions prohibiting him from soliciting JPMorgan clients for a period of one year after his JPMorgan employment ends and from using or retaining JPMorgan confidential information,” the documents read.