National Securities Broker Fined and Suspended for Fraudulent Wire Transfers

Stephanie Lynn Fagenson, of New York, NY, allegedly caused two fraudulent wire disbursements to be transferred from her customer’s account to a third-party bank.  According to FINRA, Ms. Fagenson received an email from an imposter posing as her customer requesting $100,000 to be wired to a third-party bank account.  Ms. Fagenson allegedly processed the wire request without orally confirming the request with the customer, as was required by her member firm.  Two weeks later, Ms. Fagenson purportedly received another email from the imposter requesting another wire transfer.  This time, the request was for $200,000 and, again, Ms. Fagenson allegedly processed the wire without orally confirming with her customer.  Ten days following the second wire transfer, Ms. Fagenson supposedly found out in a conversation with her customer that the customer’s email account had been hacked and that none of the wire requests had come from the customer.  FINRA assessed a fine of $5,000 and suspended Ms. Fagenson from association with any FINRA member in any capacity for 45 days.  The suspension is in effect from August 15, 2016 through September 28, 2016.

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