SEC Charges Incarcerated Felon and Five Friends in $2 Million Fraud Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six individuals, including a federal inmate, for conducting a freeriding scheme that defrauded multiple broker-dealers. The SEC’s complaint alleges that from May 2019 to early January 2021, Syed Arham Arbab, 25, and five others made more than $2 million in bogus deposits from empty or underfunded bank accounts into various brokerage accounts to deceive broker-dealers into providing instant deposit credit for online securities trading. The complaint alleges that Arbab and his fellow participants, which included his high school and college friends and a relative, received more than $1.5 million in instant deposit credit that they used to make unfunded online trades, which caused affected broker-dealers to lose at least $146,660.