Former UBS Financial Advisor Charged with Defrauding over $5 Million Dollars from His UBS Clients

Miami, Florida – Today, German Nino, a former UBS Financial Advisor, made his initial appearance in federal court in Miami to face charges of defrauding over $5 million from a family who maintained several accounts at UBS.   

According to a federal information, from about 2012, and continuing to 2020, Nino, a resident of Broward County, was a financial advisor working at a branch office of UBS Financial Services Inc. in Miami.  Nino oversaw and managed UBS investment accounts for various customers, including three victims who were related and who had various investment accounts at UBS.  Nino was the financial advisor assigned to oversee and manage the victims’ money in the accounts.

It is alleged that from about May 2014 to February 2020, Nino made a total of 62 unauthorized transfers from three UBS accounts belonging to the victims, which totaled $5,833,218.59.  To accomplish the wire fraud scheme, Nino made materially false and fraudulent statements to his victims and concealed and omitted material facts including misrepresenting the true performance, balance, and rate of return of the accounts he managed; forging the signature of his clients on documents purporting to authorize transfers out of the accounts; preparing a fraudulent land purchase contract and forging a victim’s signature on the land purchase contract to make it appear that the victim was purchasing land in Colombia by using money from the victim’s account; removing one of the victim’s email from the victim’s UBS email account profile so that the victim would not receive email notifications from UBS about unauthorized transfers; and preparing fraudulent UBS account statements and client review statements, which falsely inflated the balance and value of the victims’ accounts, says the information.  

Nino made his initial appearance in federal magistrate court in Miami before United States Magistrate Lisette M. Reid.    

Juan Antonio Gonzalez, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami, made the announcement.

FBI Miami investigated the case.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Deric Zacca is prosecuting it. Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Stone is handling asset forfeiture.

An information contains mere allegations and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 22-cr-20020.

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