SEC Charges "Money Managers" with Illegal Free-Riding

The SEC charged a pair of purported money managers with orchestrating an illegal “free-riding” scheme of selling stocks before they paid for them and netting $600,000 in illicit profits.  According to the SEC, Scott Kupersmith and Frederick Chelly portrayed themselves to broker-dealers as money managers for hedge funds or private investors, and they opened brokerage accounts in the names of purported investment funds they created. Kupersmith and Chelly then engaged in illegal free-riding by interchangeably buying and selling the same quantity of the same stock in different accounts – frequently on the same day – with the intention of profiting on swings up or down in the stock price. However, Kupersmith and Chelly did not have sufficient securities or cash on hand to cover the trades, and they instead used proceeds from stock sales in one brokerage account to pay for the purchase of the same stock in another brokerage account.

The SEC alleges that when trades were profitable, Kupersmith and Chelly took the profits. But when the trades threatened to result in substantial losses, Kupersmith and Chelly failed to cover their sales and left broker-dealers to settle the trades at a significant loss. In total, their brokers suffered more than $2 million in losing trades.

In parallel actions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office today announced the unsealing of criminal charges against Kupersmith.