Financial Adviser at Midtown Firm Pleads Guilty to Stealing $1.6 Million from Clients: DA

MIDTOWN, NY — A financial adviser at a Midtown firm has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $1.6 million from three clients and using the money for personal expenses such as credit card payments, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. announced on Wednesday.

Brian Keenan, 60, of Red Bank, New Jersey, was a trustee at Train, Babcock Advisors when he stole the money over the course of five years — between 2007 and 2012 — the DA said. He pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to first-degree Grand Larceny for stealing money from three separate trusts belonging to people in the same family.

A DA spokesperson told Patch on Thursday that Judge Maxwell Wiley promised Keenan a sentence of two and one third years to seven years in prison after a previous recommendation of three to nine years in prison.

Keenan, while employed at the firm, located at 757 Third Ave., opened a joint checking account under his name and the name of one of the beneficiaries of the trusts he managed, the DA said. He then issued more than 40 checks from the three trust accounts and deposited the funds, which totaled $1.6 million, into the joint account, according to the DA. Keenan withdrew the money as cash or transferred it to his own personal account, the DA said, and he then spent the money on his personal expenses.

The DA added that the beneficiaries on the joint account had no access to the account.

“A financial adviser’s chief responsibility is to act in the best interest of his or her clients,” District Attorney Vance said in a statement. “Instead of abiding by that duty, Brian Keenan took advantage of the victims in this case and stole their money to pay for his own personal expenses. My Office is committed to ensuring the integrity of New York’s financial advisory industry and holding accountable those who engage in this type of fraud.”

DA Vance thanked the US Securities and Exchange Commission for their work on the case.

Keenan will be formally sentenced on Dec. 21, according to the DA.

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