Feds: Global firm with Stamford ties pleads guilty to fraud schemes
NatWest Markets — described by Leonard C. Boyle, acting U.S. attorney for Connecticut, as a “repeat offender” — also agreed to pay $35 million in fines, restitution and forfeiture.
A United Kingdombased global banking and financial services firm, with a location in Stamford, pleaded guilty Tuesday to various fraud schemes, according to federal prosecutors.
NatWest Markets — described by Leonard C. Boyle, acting U.S. attorney for Connecticut, as a “repeat offender” — also agreed to pay $35 million in fines, restitution and forfeiture.
The firm pleaded guilty to wire fraud and securities fraud in connection with a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in the district of Connecticut. Judge Omar A. Williams accepted the pleads and sentenced NatWest to pay the hefty fee. The company will also serve three years of probation and agrees to oversight by an independent compliance monitor.
“NatWest is a repeat offender,” Boyle said in a statement. “In this instance, a criminal conviction was an appropriate penalty, given the conduct of NatWest’s supervisors, its compliance deficiencies, and its decision not to take the steps required to fulfill its agreement with this office that resolved a prior securities fraud scheme.”
Between January 2008 and May 2014, NatWest traders in London and Stamford were involved in fraud schemes in connection with the purchase and sale of U.S. Treasury future contracts, prosecutors said. Also, in 2018, two other traders working at NatWest’s Singapore branch were involved in a fraud scheme in connection with the purchase and sale of U.S. Treasury securities in the cash market.
In each scheme, prosecutors said, NatWest traders placed orders with the intent to cancel them before they were executed in an attempt to gain profit by deceiving other market participants by pushing false and misleading information about the genuine supply and demand of the market. These “spoof” orders pushed the prevailing market price up and down so traders could make more profitable trades through their schemes, prosecutors said.
One of the schemes reached a material breach of the Oct. 25, 2017, NonProsecution Agreement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut and NatWest’s U.S. brokerdealer subsidiary, prosecutors said. It also happened in 2018, when NatWest was on probation after a May 2015 guilty plea and a January 2017 sentencing for conspiring to manipulate the foreign currency exchange market.
Prosecutors said anyone who believes they might have been a victim in this case should visit www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/case/ natwest.