A former HSBC broker was suspended from the industry for seven months and fined $5,000 for allegedly falsifying personal documents as accommodations for HSBC bank customers.
Daniel Liang purportedly changed the title of customers' bank accounts and altered bills and statements to make it appear as though customers received documents at U.S. residential addresses when in fact they had post office box addresses, according to a FINRA filing.
"Liang altered the documents to help the customers satisfy the HSBC Bank's requirement that customers have residential—not P.O. Box—addresses," FINRA said.
Liang worked for HSBC Securities in Pasadena, Calif. He allegedly falsified a utility bill and two bank statements belonging to himself and his nephew by cutting and pasting the names and addresses of three bank customers over his and his nephew's names to give the appearance that the statements belonged to the customers and that they had been mailed to U.S. residential addresses.
Liang also changed the title of four accounts on HSBC bank deposit account agreements by placing stickers over errors he made while originally completing the documents, FINRA claimed. He allegedly made these changes after the customer had signed the mislabeled documents and declined to return to the branch to sign new copies.
The falsification of documents occurred from June 2010 to October 2014, FINRA said.
Liang's peccadilloes didn't stop there. He also breached compliance procedures by purportedly prompting customers to sign blank or incomplete mutual fund disclosure and investment acknowledgement forms, which he maintained in his files.
Liang could not be reached for comment. In his settlement with FINRA, Liang neither admitted nor denied the charges but consented to an entry of FINRA's findings.
Liang joined HSBC Securities in August 2005 and was dismissed in November 2014 for submitting altered documents to the bank, according to his BrokerCheck report. Liang's seven-month suspension began in April.
Jeremy Balkin, a spokesman for HSBC USA, did not return voice and email messages seeking comment on the matter.
