Advisor Charged with Trying to Fabricate Evidence, Threaten WitnessesAdvisor Charged with Trying to Fabricate Evidence, Threaten Witnesses
According to the Department of Justice, Adam Kaplan told an unnamed associate to threaten to harm witnesses in an ongoing fraud investigation against him and his brother.
An advisor previously charged with fraud threatened potential witnesses in his case and tried to destroy evidence, saying one witness should be “peeing blood” or “missing teeth,” according to the Justice Department.
The DOJ charged Adam Kaplan (along with his brother Daniel) in 2023 for defrauding hundreds of clients of at least $5 million between 2018 and 2022, when both were advisors at the New York-based RIA IHT Wealth Management.
Many of their victims were elderly or disabled, and the duo faced up to 20 years in prison for the charges of wire and investment fraud, as well as money laundering, according ot the FBI.
SEC records show both brothers had brief stints at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch before joining IHT (according to the commission records, they were fired from Morgan Stanley for “conduct involving utilizing client logon credentials to access client accounts”).
The original indictment alleged that the Kaplans would agree to a 1% fee of managed assets for payment but would leave that section blank on advisory agreements, later filling in higher percentages.
According to the DOJ, the brothers would also convince clients to give them access to credit cards, brokerage and bank accounts and use them for their expenses. If clients noticed, the duo would say the charges were for advisory fees (that had already been charged).
Some clients contacted fraud departments at their banks to dispute the charges, but the brothers allegedly fabricated documents and forged signatures showing clients agreed to the charges. The plan worked for a while, but the brothers were fired in 2021 after a client noticed the advisory fee was between 2.5% and 3% after they’d agreed to 1%.
Adam Kaplan became aware of a federal grand jury investigation into their actions and decided to try to impede it, according to DOJ.
“Adam Kaplan allegedly ordered threats be made to his victims and attempted to bribe authorities to disrupt a federal investigation into the brothers’ misconduct,” FBI Assistant Director James Dennehey said. “Kaplan’s alleged actions reflect remorselessness as he continued to make concerted efforts to protect his multimillion-dollar fraud scheme even following his initial arrest.”
The new charges in the indictment allege that Kaplan contacted an individual unnamed in the indictment (called “Co-Conspirator 1”) with an untraceable burner phone and paid him tens of thousands of dollars to create false evidence and threaten to harm victims (the DOJ said the unnamed individual did not do these things, but lied to Kaplan about doing so).
Kaplan allegedly asked the man to create a fake email from a victim for Kaplan to use as evidence in his defense in the trial.
According to the DOJ, he told the associate that one victim needed “to fear,” that they should be “peeing blood/missing teeth and another visited/scared,” that a victim should be sent an image of a skull and crossbones, and that the associate should “put (a victim’s) phone on fire…seriously, please blow it up.”
After he was arrested, Kaplan tried to bribe a DOJ official and continued to try to pay off witnesses, all while continuing to commit credit card fraud, the DOJ claimed. Attorneys for Kaplan didn’t return a request for comment prior to publication.
The added charges against Adam Kaplan included two counts of attempted obstruction of justice and additional charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.
During an SEC investigation into the conduct cited by the DOJ in its original indictment, the Kaplans were represented by Todd Blanche, an attorney who became more well-known for defending Donald Trump in several cases. They later sued Blanche for malpractice.
Blanche represented Trump in charges related to allegedly illegally holding onto classified documents as well as his involvement in a scheme to reimburse a payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election (and was later convicted of the latter charges). Since then, now-President Trump selected Blanche as the new deputy attorney general.
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