Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today the arrest and indictment of MICHAEL AXEL, a stockbroker for Tripp & Co., Inc.  AXEL has been charged with stealing nearly $600,000 from four of his clients, three of whom were senior citizens, by forging checks cut to the clients from their accounts.  AXEL wired the majority of the money that he stole overseas, having fallen victim to a Nigerian scam and believing that he would inherit millions of dollars.

The defendant is charged with Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison; Grand Larceny in the Third Degree and Forgery in the Second Degree, both class D felonies, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The investigation leading to today’s indictment revealed that in his work as a stockbroker, AXEL was responsible for managing the portfolios of his clients.  Beginning in 2002, AXEL requested that checks be cut from one of his client’s accounts and sent to him for delivery, when the client himself had made no such request. Then, rather than delivering the checks to the client, AXEL forged his client’s signature, endorsed the checks to himself and deposited them into his personal checking account. Between 2002 and 2005, AXEL stole more than $150,000 from his first victim, a high school teacher. 

In August, 2006, AXEL learned that one of his clients, who was then 90-years-old, had decided to move into an assisted living facility. Soon after, AXEL began making requests that checks be cut from that client’s account, forging the client’s signature, and depositing the money into his personal checking account.  AXEL stole nearly $400,000 from that nonagenarian client.

The investigation further revealed that a third client of AXEL passed away in May of 2007 at age 88.  In the three weeks following her death, AXEL stole more than $10,000 from an account that his client held jointly with her daughter, using the same scheme of ordering checks cut from the account, forging the endorsements, and depositing the money into his own checking account.  Similarly, AXEL stole more than $13,000 from an account held by an 83-year-old client and his son.

In 2005, AXEL received an email from an individual who claimed to be the attorney for a distant relative of AXEL’S who had died and left AXEL $8,750,000.  In reality, the email was part of a common scam in which individuals overseas try to get Americans to send “up front” money to them with the promise that the money will be used to unencumber millions that will subsequently come to the American victim. In fact, no such millions existed. After he received the email, AXEL sent overseas by wire transfer more than $400,000 of the money that he had stolen, apparently believing that the money would aid in the release of the supposed inheritance. After his crimes were discovered, Tripp & Co. took steps to make their clients whole through a combination of repayment by the company and money it received from its insurance carrier. AXEL has repaid Tripp about half of what he stole.

The case was presented to the Grand Jury by Assistant District Attorney Hope Korenstein of the Frauds Bureau, under the supervision of Michael Kitsis, Chief of the Frauds Bureau, and Jeannette Molina and Micki Shulman, Deputy Bureau Chiefs.  Investigator Santiago Batista of the District Attorney’s Office Investigation Bureau conducted the investigation, under the supervision of Supervising Investigator Stephen McCallion, and Investigation Bureau Chief Joseph Pennisi, and Assistant Chief Terence Mulderrig.

Defendant information

MICHAEL AXEL, 10/20/1939
345 East 52nd Street
New York, New York

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