Love his name..Marlo Moron! 50-year-old PH stock brokerage shuts down P700-million scam perpetrated by rogue clerk One of the oldest stock brokerage firms in the country ceased operations earlier this week after its owners uncovered a long-running scam by a “trusted employee” that resulted in almost the entire investors of clients’ shares held by the firm being wiped out. The company—50-year-old R&L Investments Inc. based in Mandaluyong City, and a member of good standing of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE)—saw “over P700 million worth of its inventory of stocks” stolen by its settlement clerk, who was apprehended by police operatives and had since confessed to the crime, according to various market sources. The Inquirer obtained a copy of the letter of R&L Investments’ owner, Lucy Linda Lee, to PSE director Alejandro Yu narrating the details of the theft by the firm’s employee, Marlo Moron, who allegedly began dipping his hands into the firm’s stock inventory in small amounts in 2011—with the amounts gradually increasing as he was emboldened over the years. “Almost all our stock position had been depleted,” Lee said in her report to the PSE where she also disclosed that the firm had decided to stop trading operations starting last Monday, Nov. 4, to mitigate the damage. At the end of 2018, R&L Investments held P765 million worth of stocks on behalf of its clients, according to its audited financial statements. According to various sources, the scam was discovered in the days leading up to the long All Saints’ Day weekend when the company was found to be short of P3 million worth of stocks at the end of the trading day. As the hours progressed, and amid a mad scramble to borrow shares to cover this shortfall, it was gradually discovered that the value of missing stocks had ballooned to P300 million, and eventually to almost its entire inventory after a more thorough internal audit. Read more: https://business.inquirer.net/282716/50-year-old-ph-stock-brokerage-shuts-down#ixzz64d4ZmUIl Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook
Got to keep checking for hands in your till though. Somebody has also been rather careless, seems to me.
