A veteran U.S. financial advisor who pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with a long-running Ponzi scheme is now facing five years in prison.
Last June, a former advisor with Northwestern Mutual Investment Services LLC, John Jay Kersey, was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, wire fraud for allegedly stealing US$8.6 million from investors over a 20-year period ending in 2023.
According to U.S. authorities’ allegations, Kersey convinced investors to transfer assets into purported investments, but actually misappropriated money for various personal uses, and also to make payments to other clients in order to sustain the scheme.
He also allegedly provided investors with falsified account statements that used, “fictitious financial summaries and bank account numbers … [and] fabricated charts and graphs.”
In May 2023, Kersey resigned from his firm amid an internal investigation into allegations that he’d taken money from clients and provided investors with false account documents.
According to regulatory filings, at the time, he admitted to taking money from a client and depositing it into an outside account.
In early 2024, Kersey was permanently banned by the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. (FINRA) after he failed to cooperate with its investigation into client complaints about missing money.
Now, Kersey has been sentenced to 60 months in prison in a U.S. district court.