A Florida-based former dual registrant for UBS Financial Services stole nearly $6 million from a client, using the money to buy gifts for multiple romantic partners and to pay back funds he’d taken from a different client, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Both the SEC and the Justice Department concurrently filed charges against German Nino, a former registered rep with UBS, who operated out of a UBS branch office in Miami. Nino faces eight counts of wire fraud, according to court filings.
Nino was with UBS from 2012 until 2020, according to his FINRA BrokerCheck page, with previous multiyear stints at HSBC Securities and Merrill Lynch, among others. At UBS, Nino worked as a financial advisor for an unnamed high-net-worth couple with about $11 million invested. Starting in 2014, Nino began making unauthorized wire transfers out of the couple’s accounts, according to the SEC’s complaint.
Sometimes, Nino would simultaneously liquidate the victim’s securities at the time he made the wire transfers, and he kept these purportedly stolen funds in a separate bank account from his own marital accounts, according to the commission. Nino allegedly continued taking funds from the victims’ accounts through February 2020, spending about $1.2 million repaying a previous victim.
He also spent $4.6 million on several women he had romantic relationships with, using it to make purchases on small gifts and vacations, luxury cars, private school tuition and an apartment in Colombia. To hide the alleged fraud, Nino would regularly meet with the clients, and give false information about their investment performance, account balances and rates of return. He failed to tell them about the wire transfers he’d made.
In cases where he transferred more than $100,000 out of the account, Nino purportedly forged his clients’ signatures on letters of authorization for UBS, and altered the firm’s records to make sure the clients didn’t get any email notifications about the suspect transfers. According to the DOJ, Nino even prepared a fake land purchase contract with a forged signature to make it look like the unnamed investor was purchasing land in Colombia.
Starting in early 2020, the invested couple’s son began finding discrepancies in one of their accounts and confronted Nino about the questionable balances. Nino eventually confessed that he’d stolen the money, telling the client’s son that he would pay the harmed couple back using a signing bonus he would receive from joining a new firm. The son reportedly told UBS about Nino’s conduct, with investigators asking Nino to submit to an interview. In response, Nino resigned, according to the SEC (an attorney representing Nino at this week’s proceedings did not comment).
The SEC also filed in Florida federal court and is seeking injunctive relief, as well as disgorgement, prejudgment interest and civil penalties against Nino.