SEC Charges Former Portfolio Manager With Not Reporting Stock Trades

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed fraud charges against Geoffrey Brod of Avon, Conn., a former portfolio manager with Aeltus Investment Management, now ING Investment Management, for not reporting 3,500 personal trades he made between 1999 and 2003 that earned him profits of $410,000. Many of the stocks Brod bought and sold he also held in mutual funds that he ran.

The SEC said he also breached the firm’s ethics code, which barred him from shorting stocks.

Brod hid his trades from the firm by submitting false quarterly and annual reports and falsely certified that he had complied with the firm’s ethics code. Aeltus fired Brod in 2003.

“Investment professionals must conduct their personal stock trading in accordance with restrictions imposed by their firms’ code of ethics and the federal securities laws,” said Randall Lee, regional director of the SEC Pacific Regional Office. “Brod executed thousands of trades in utter disregard of those restrictions and deliberately evaded them for personal gain.”