It appears JPMorgan has employee screening - or perhaps retention - problems.
According to Reuters, a (now former) JPMorgan employee, who was ordered to attend counseling for gambling, is facing criminal charges that he engaged in a scheme to steal $5 million from the bank in order to pay personal debts.
That in itself would not be exciting, however the details of how he planned on stealing from the bank to repay his debt, is.
Lawrence Obracanik, who worked as an operations manager for JPMorgan's broker-dealer services, was charged in a criminal complaint made public on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan with wire fraud and attempted wire fraud. According to the filed complaint, from July 2014 to February 2016, Obracanik made or tried to make 22 wire transfers for more than $5 million from an account at JPM to an account at another bank belonging to an unnamed individual.
The complaint said that during an interview with two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in August, Obracanik admitted wiring the money to that person's account and said that he had done so to pay personal debts.
Some further digging reveals that those debts were as a result of Obracanik's own bad habits: following a court appearance on Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker, he was released on a $100,000 bond. He was instructed as part of his bail conditions to seek employment and attend counseling for gambling, according to court records.
The complaint against Obracanik did not identify JPMorgan by name. But a profile for him on LinkedIn said that he had worked for the bank in Texas. A spokesman for JPMorgan declined co comment. The bank is based in New York.
Obracanik, a 42-year-old resident of Fort Worth, Texas, turned himself in to authorities on Tuesday in New York, according to a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
It is unclear why the Larry was fired: after all the combination of engaging in reckless debt, using debt to cover it up, and then stealing from others to cover said debts is what the US banking business model has transitioned to going into the financial crisis and for the 8 years since. The recent surge in bank stocks is as a result of hope that precisely this model is set to make a come back under the Trump administration.