6-Man charged with death threats to U.S. regulators

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by latinotrader, Jan 17, 2011.

  1. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1423733320110114

    6 Man charged with death threats to U.S. regulators

    Fri Jan 14, 2011 5:10pm EST
    * Vincent McCrudden accused of making threat

    * U.S. says SEC/CFTC chiefs, others were targeted

    * Defendant denied bail, lawyer says client is not guilty (Editors' note: language in paragraph 28 may be objectionable to some readers) (Adds comments from sister, detail on hearing location)

    By Jonathan Stempel and Edith Honan

    CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y./NEW YORK, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A New York money manager with a long history of legal battles with the government has been charged with threatening to kill 47 U.S. officials, including the nation's top securities and commodities regulators.

    Vincent McCrudden, 49, last month allegedly posted online an "execution list" naming officials, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.

    Federal prosecutors said the threat came shortly after the CFTC brought an enforcement action accusing the former commodities trader and two of his companies with operating unregistered investments.

    McCrudden threatened officials in emails and web postings at the SEC, CFTC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the National Futures Association, authorities said.

    "Go buy a gun, and lets get to work in taking back our country from these criminals," McCrudden allegedly wrote, in a statement calling for the four regulators to be abolished. "I will be the first one to lead by example."

    The arrest comes amid heightened concern for the safety of public officials after last Saturday's mass shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Arizona. Six people died, including federal judge John Roll.

    "This is a crime of violence," Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Caffarone said at a Friday afternoon hearing in the federal court in Central Islip, New York, located east of New York City.

    McCrudden, looking haggard and dressed in blue jeans and a black fleece sweatshirt, was denied bail at the hearing. He did not enter a plea.

    "The allegations in this complaint are incredibly frightening and intimidating to any public official," U.S. Magistrate Judge E. Thomas Boyle said at the hearing.

    Boyle called the content of McCrudden's alleged emails and postings "a real threat, as far as this court is concerned."

    LAWYER SAYS DEFENDANT NOT GUILTY

    McCrudden has worked on Wall Street for more than 20 years, specializing in commodities, derivatives and foreign exchange, according to his biography on the website of his company, Alnbri Management LLC.
    he biography also said he has "spent the past 13 years and counting combating a colluded Government attempt to discredit and harass Mr. McCrudden through repeated bogus procedures."

    McCrudden also was an amateur boxer and played professional soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League, the biography said.

    The government said McCrudden, of Dix Hills, New York, has been living for the last few months in Singapore.

    He was arrested on Thursday at Newark-Liberty International Airport and faces counts of transmitting death threats. Each is punishable by up to five years in prison.

    "Threats of death and violence against federal officials and employees for executing their duties are simply unacceptable," Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice's criminal division, said in a statement.

    Bruce Barket, a lawyer for McCrudden who described himself as a long-time friend, told the judge his client was "a frustrated litigant who has a penchant for vulgarity." The lawyer also said McCrudden does not own a gun.

    "He is at times ill-mannered and short-tempered and not very articulate in terms of expressing himself," Barket said in an earlier telephone interview. "But the idea that he was actually threatening somebody is ludicrous."

    McCrudden is divorced with two children and "came back" to the country to answer the charges, the lawyer added.

    Four of the defendant's eight siblings appeared at Friday's hearing to support him.

    "Our family absolutely loves our brother," his sister Kathy Warszycki said. "He will not and has never hurt anyone."

    The complaint is dated Dec. 21, 2010, but was not unsealed until Friday.

    Arnold Weiner, a former federal prosecutor who represents defendants in white-collar crime cases, said the Tucson shooting may have spurred efforts to arrest McCrudden faster.

    "There are threats that the prosecutors tend not to be sensitive about and then very soon after there is an assassination, and there's a great uptick in arrests and prosecutions," Weiner said.

    DEFENDANT SAID TO THREATEN REVENGE

    McCrudden was also charged in 2002 with 15 counts of felony mail fraud relating to his alleged preparation of financial statements that inflated the value of various investments, but was acquitted by a jury, court records show.

    According to FINRA records, his employment history also includes a dismissal from the firm Hedge Fund Capital Partners LLC after he made "numerous threatening, abusive, harassing, coercive, intimidating and/or vulgar communications to his member firm employees."

    FINRA disciplinary proceedings for that action ended on Nov. 17. Two days later, prosecutors said, McCrudden emailed an oversight group that reviews FINRA activity, threatening "revenge" for enforcement actions against him.

    And in a separate email, McCrudden is said to have threatened Gensler specifically, telling a CFTC lawyer: "You can tell that fucking corrupt piece of Goldman Sachs shit (G.G.) I am coming after him as well."

    Gensler worked for 18 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), where he became co-head of finance, according to his official biography.

    The SEC, the CFTC and FINRA declined to comment.

    "We get threatening emails all the time," including some that contain death threats, said a CFTC official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    NFA Chief Executive Dan Roth said the group denied an application by McCrudden in 2005 to become a commodity pool operator, citing the defendant's statements under oath that he misled clients about his trading activities.

    The case is U.S. v. McCrudden, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 10-01503. (Reporting by Edith Honan in Central Islip, N.Y. and Jonathan Stempel in New York; additional reporting by Kristina Cooke, Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Sarah N. Lynch, Grant McCool, Roberta Rampton, Scot Paltrow, Karey Wutkowski and Rachelle Younglai; editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn, Matthew Lewis and Andre Grenon)
     
  2. Good, someone needs to light a fire under their rumps. Regulation needs a complete rework.
     
  3. Is this related to the 'It official, trading will kill you' thread?

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  4. Samsara

    Samsara

    This guy's a real winner.

    Behold the unpronounceable "firm's" website: <a href="http://www.alnbri.com/index.html">here</a>. It looks like he made it himself, using crayons and typing up HTML in a .txt file.
     
  5. A crazy man who certainly deserves to spend some quality time behind bars. He doesn't realize that violence only makes things MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.