On February 8,2000, Donald J. Martineau a former Vice President and Senior Financial Consultant for Merrill Lynch in Boston was convicted in federal court of mail and wire fraud. Martineau carried out his crime by claiming to be acting on behalf of Merill Lynch. He convinced clients to invest funds through him into investments he recommended were safe. He did this by inducing clients to transfer funds by wire of otherwise into accounts he designated. He then defrauded his clients in one oftwo ways.

One way he managed to do this act was by him cutting and pasting some of the clients signatures from authorizations for wire transfers and then reapplied them to different wiring instructions. The altered wire instructions ordered Merill Lynch to wire funds from the respective clients' accounts at Merill Lynch to a personal bank account under the name of D&D Real Estate that Martineau controlled.

Another way in which he defrauded the company and it s clients was by Martieau inducing some of his clients to invest directly in D&D Real Estate. He claimed that this company was created to provide capital to a group of corporate executives holding restrictive stock options in a company. Martineau then falsely promised his clients an 11% annual interest gain. After Martinaeu got the money from the clients in the D&D Real estate account he then transferred the money into another account hecontrolled.

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