Mariner Wealth Advisors is going through two extra lawsuits over alleged shopper poaching and makes an attempt to steal commerce secrets and techniques.
A Jan. 12 lawsuit filed by RWA Wealth Companions accuses Mariner of conducting a ”clandestine scheme” to acquire an “unfair benefit within the wealth administration trade by destabilizing the contractual relationships of a competitor, stealing its proprietary info, and accessing its laptop knowledge and community with out permission.”
Mariner Wealth’s “clandestine plot,” based on the swimsuit, centered on the recruitment of “an ‘inside man’ — discovering the right double agent in Brandon Berman, a then wealth supervisor for competitor Polaris Wealth Advisory Group, LLC.”
In early 2022, RWA bought Polaris Wealth Advisory Group, based mostly in San Rafael, California.
Mariner, based on the RWA swimsuit, “knew their ‘inside man’ was well-positioned to execute their subterfuge as a result of Berman managed (or assisted in managing) a couple of hundred of Polaris’ shopper relationships and had entry to Polaris’ proprietary techniques and shopper knowledge.”
‘Benedict Arnold’
The swimsuit alleges that Berman served a “Benedict Arnold position,” and that Mariner “coached and directed him to surreptitiously feed them confidential and proprietary shopper knowledge and enterprise info, and to steal purchasers.”
The swimsuit continues: “Worse nonetheless, it seems that Defendants [Mariner] encourage their ‘inside males’ to do all of this earlier than these folks present their employer any trace that they intend to resign and soar to” Mariner.
In March 2022, Berman knowledgeable Mariner that he had used Polaris’ techniques to create a shopper checklist “chock-full of proprietary info with out Polaris’ or Polaris’ purchasers’ permission or data — a doc he had creatively named ‘the Listing,’” the swimsuit states.
Upon studying this, Mariner “didn’t inform him to cease or to delete the doc. As an alternative, it seems they organized to talk with (and/or get info from) Berman’s legal professionals to create a canopy story and develop a recreation plan to cowl their collusion — together with a memo that supplied ideas and tips on the way to keep away from getting caught when stealing confidential info (and plaintiff believes that there will likely be extra evidentiary assist for this connection after an inexpensive alternative for additional investigation or discovery),” the swimsuit states.
Mariner, the swimsuit states, “openly accepted ‘the Listing’ from Berman, with data of the improper circumstances beneath which it was created and totally conscious that Berman had no proper to own it and no proper to present it” to Mariner.