Raymond James is suing a former summer intern who the firm alleges ran a scorched earth campaign of fabricated email allegations and smears against his former mentors after he wasn’t hired for a full-time job.
Raymond James filed a suit in Ohio federal court last Friday against Paul Saba, who lives in Cincinnati. The co-plaintiffs include Timothy VanBenthuysen and Richard Redvanly, two registered reps with Raymond James working out of the Healthcare Investment Banking Group at the firm’s Atlanta office.
Read the lawsuit
According to the suit, Saba worked as an investment banking intern at the Atlanta office in the summer of 2024, with Redvanly assigned as his mentor (though Saba wasn’t working in his division). Saba was notified he wouldn’t receive a full-time offer at the end of the internship. The intern sent several emails to VanBenthuysen seeking a role in the group, to no avail.
“In the ensuing months, and as a direct result of his frustration at not being given a full-time offer to join the company, (Saba) began an email campaign of defaming and harassing Messrs. VanBenthuysen and Redvanly,” the complaint read.
On Nov. 4, someone allegedly sent an email from a fictitious account to several individuals at Raymond James, falsely accusing Redvanly of insider trading.
Later that month, the reps learned of emails sent from fictitious accounts to numerous people at Raymond James and outside the firm, concocting false news headlines indicating VanBenthuysen and Redvanly had each been accused and convicted of rape.
The sender then targeted Redvanly’s girlfriend’s employer, accusing her of insider trading. The same sender also created an email account and sent an email to Redvanly’s girlfriend, claiming to be someone named “Grace” who’d had an affair with Redvanly. The email assailant also created a false email thread sent to Raymond James and other individuals intimating that VanBenthuysen (who is married) and another employee were having an affair.
According to Raymond James, it didn’t end there; the sender (who they allege was Saba) sent other email threads with fictitious addresses, including explicit images and claimed he’d received them by mistake. In late December, he fabricated an email account from VanBenthuysen’s wife that he claimed had sent an explicit email, including a lewd photo Saba allegedly found on the internet.
“This malicious, harassing, defamatory, abusive and damaging conduct continued throughout the month of December 2024, during which time the anonymous attacker user multiple other impersonated email accounts to harass, defame and falsely portray Plaintiffs in a pattern of escalating rhetoric and repulsiveness,” the complaint read.
The campaign culminated on Dec. 30 with an email account impersonating a banking employee previously with Raymond James that purported to invite numerous other competitors of VanBenthuysen, Redvanly and Raymond James to join a “bogus Neo-Nazi club for bankers.” The email named VanBenthuysen as the point of contact.
The mass of email accusations and smears led Raymond James to shutter its Atlanta office on January 7 and 8 to assess the security threats posed by the emails, “which caused a significant business loss and disruption,” according to the complaint.
However, it was the email about the fake neo-Nazi club that led Raymond James’ Cyber Threat Center to focus on Saba as the alleged harasser. According to the complaint, the metadata for a PDF attachment espousing the bigoted values of the fake club indicated its author was “Paul Saba.” The harasser sent another email several days later impersonating Vanebenthuysen himself, with a similar PDF attachment with Saba again named as its author in the metadata.
The Cyber Threat Center also found the recovery phone number listed for one of the fictitious email accounts. Though it only showed a partial phone number, those digits matched Saba’s phone number on his resume to Raymond James several months earlier.
On Jan. 6, Raymond James’ head of litigation purportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Saba by email (and by UPS the following day) demanding he immediately stop the alleged email campaign. According to the complaint, Saba confirmed that night that he received the letter, and Raymond James is “not aware of any email attacks” since that point.
Raymond James and attorneys for the reps wouldn’t comment beyond the complaint, and Saba did not return a request for comment prior to publication. In the complaint, the plaintiffs seek damages expected to exceed $75,000 and an unnamed amount of punitive damages.
