Manager at Usain Bolt’s Investment Firm Admits to Stealing Funds From Clients’ Accounts
After discovering that he is missing $12.7 million from an account with a private investment firm in Jamaica, Usain Bolt gave the firm 10 days to return the money to his account.
According to Nationwide News Network, a client relationship manager at the investment firm may be partly responsible for some of the theft.
Stocks & Securities Limited employee, Jean-Ann Panton gave a sworn affidavit to the Financial Services Commission detailing how she has been siphoning funds from the investment firm for over a decade. The media outlet has obtained a copy of the sworn affidavit.
The client relationship manager has been working at Stocks & Securities Limited for 25 years.
Panton reportedly informed the commission that she started stealing money from the firm back in 2010 after her father was diagnosed with cancer. She stated she started “borrowing” funds from client accounts to pay for expenses related to his medical expenses. She said she didn’t have a plan in place on how she would pay the funds back but said she only worried about taking care of her father at the time.
Panton’s father eventually passed away three years after the diagnosis. She revealed that she also took money from the firm’s client accounts to cover the funeral expenses.
She Panton claimed that she continued borrowing funds when she said that her brother had made an attempt to kill their mother.
He wound up being committed to a home and Panton said she had to cover the expense of doing so.
But the stealing and siphoning of funds did not stop there.
After the COVID-19 pandemic struck, due to her income going down at the firm, she wasn’t able to repay the “loan” she had taken from the company. She then continued to take money for “various purposes.”
Panton mentions that she has taken money from the accounts of nearly 40 people. The money she claims to have stolen totals just under $900,000 or $138 million in Jamaican Money. She says she also stole $117,000 from other accounts.
She also says that if the money remained untouched the total value of those accounts would be $4 million.
BLACK ENTERPRISE reported last week that this isn’t an isolated incident with Stocks & Securities Limited, which has its headquarters based in Kingston, Jamaica.
Panton may not be the only one involved in stealing money from the investment firm. According to CBS News, the company has stated that it uncovered the fraud earlier this year and that several other clients may also be missing millions of dollars from their accounts.