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EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A former financial adviser with Morgan Stanley in El Paso was handed a 12-year prison sentence for orchestrating a multi-million dollar fraud scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed that Jesus Rodriguez de la Cruz, aged 46, misled Morgan Stanley and its clients by making materially false statements, pretenses, and promises from May 2018 to August 2021.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Rodriguez de la Cruz executed unauthorized transfers, moving funds from both the bank accounts of Morgan Stanley and its clients into other accounts for his personal gain.
In one instance, Rodriguez de la Cruz created false communications and documents impersonating a client and submitted them to Morgan Stanley personnel to cause “fraudulent transfers on the client’s line of credit account for personal profit,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
One of these included a form that falsely claimed the client had verbally authorized the transfer of more than $48,000 for the purchase of real estate in El Paso. Morgan Stanley initiated the wire transfer from the client’s account to a separate bank account that belonged to one of Rodriguez de la Cruz’s family members, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Rodriguez de la Cruz also purchased a Lamborghini after a fraudulent transfer of about $125,000 from a client’s account that was transferred to another account. He did not report any of the embezzled funds as income on his tax returns from 2017 through 2021.
In total, Morgan Stanley lost over $5 million through Rodriguez de la Cruz’s schemes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Rodriguez de la Cruz was indicted by a federal grand jury in December 2023 and was arrested in January 2024.
He then pleaded guilty in November to one count of wire fraud, one count of engaging in a monetary transaction over $10,000 using criminally derived proceeds, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of making and subscribing a false income tax return.
