On March 27, 2025, Jesus Rodriguez de la Cruz — a Morgan Stanley financial advisor in El Paso, Texas — was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud, an unlawful monetary transaction exceeding $10,000, aggravated identity theft, and filing false income tax returns, following a joint FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation inquiry that resulted in his indictment in December 2023 and arrest in January 2024. Rodriguez de la Cruz orchestrated the scheme from May 2018 through August 2021, submitting forged client authorization documents to Morgan Stanley staff to trigger unauthorized wire transfers out of client accounts and into accounts under his own control, including a falsified verbal authorization form falsely claiming a client had approved a $48,575.36 transfer for a real-estate purchase. He drew approximately $125,000 from a separate client's line of credit to purchase a Lamborghini for himself, concealed all embezzled proceeds from the IRS across five consecutive tax years causing a tax loss of $408,055, and — in prosecutors' most damning allegation — personally recruited at least one woman to become his client for the express purpose of stealing her identity and hijacking her accounts. The total loss to Morgan Stanley reached $5,554,968.10. That recruited victim, who trusted Rodriguez de la Cruz with her savings after he sought her out, had no way of knowing the advisor sitting across from her had already chosen her as his next target before she signed a single document.