The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s building downtown at 701 E. Byrd St.
A former longtime Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond employee will learn his fate this week for a nearly four-year scheme in which he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars by using illegal inside information to trade on the stocks of the same financial institutions he was tasked with examining.
Robert Brian Thompson, 44, is set to stand for sentencing on Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge M. Hannah Lauck for insider trading and making false statements while attempting to cover the tracks of those trades.
A resident of Chesterfield, Thompson has asked the court to consider a prison sentence of no more than 15 months, while federal prosecutors want him to serve 30-37 months.
Thompson was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Nov. 8, 2024, and pleaded guilty days later on Nov. 19. He admitted to using “material nonpublic information” that he obtained due to his position as bank examiner to make 69 trades, both purchases and sales, of tens of thousands of shares in more than seven different publicly traded financial institutions. The scheme ran from at least October 2020 through February 2024. He personally profited from those trades to the tune of $771,000, an amount he’ll be forced to forfeit once convicted.
Thompson worked at the Fed from 2004 until early last year, helping to regulate 18 large banks – those with assets of more than $100 billion.
Among the stocks that he traded on were Capital One and New York Community Bancorp, both of which were under Thompson’s purview at the Fed.
Robert Brian Thompson
For his Capital One trades, court filings state that in 2023 Thompson used information from internal Fed emails showing that the bank’s yet-to-be-released earnings would significantly exceed market estimates.
Just hours before Capital One was set to release those earnings publicly, Thompson purchased 7,500 shares of Capital One stock at a cost of $678,000, or $90.40 per share.
The stock jumped 9% the next day after the earnings release and Thompson sold his shares at $100.98 apiece, resulting in a profit of $79,000.
For his NYCB trades last year, Thompson again used non-public information from the Fed to find out that the bank would be announcing significant losses related to loans it took on as part of its acquisition of a then-failing Signature Bank.
Thompson purchased 1,600 options on NYCB shares at a cost of $14,000, which would allow him to profit if the bank’s stock price fell.
Two days later, NYCB’s earnings were announced and the stock dropped 37%. The next day Thompson sold his options, reaping a profit of approximately $505,000. That equaled a return on his investment of 3,745% in less than a week.
Federal regulations prohibit employees of the Federal Reserve System in Thompson’s position from trading in bank securities altogether. Employees are required to regularly file forms to declare their financial holdings.
Thompson admitted to making false statements by lying on that documentation and claiming he owned no such assets. In reality, he had a portfolio with more than $500,000 worth of bank stocks and options.
A native of South Boston, Virginia, Thompson was raised on a small cow farm in Victoria, Virginia, his father working for Norfolk Southern Railroad, according to court filings.
Thompson, his attorney and others, in letters written to Judge Lauck in recent weeks, describe his childhood as being greatly influenced by his parents’ financial struggles.
In describing his motivation for making the insider trades, Thompson told Lauck: “I wasn’t seeking an extravagant, lavish lifestyle. My intent was financial security for my children because I wanted to prevent them from feeling the impact of parents’ struggling financially and the subsequent domino-effect.”
Indeed, the profits from his trades weren’t spent, rather it were put into savings. Court records state he still has the money and intends to repay the required forfeited amount in full prior to his sentencing.
“I hope these payments will demonstrate my accountability and will offer some sense of reconciliation to the court and to my victims in this case,” Thompson wrote.
Thompson will be sentenced at the federal courthouse in Richmond.
Thompson attended Longwood University on a partial baseball scholarship, before a back injury ended his playing days. After graduating from Longwood, he later earned an MBA from the University of Richmond while working at the Fed.
He rose through the ranks at the Fed, got married, had two kids and lived an otherwise stand-up life, according to the letters to the judge.
“I am a middle-aged college-educated father and husband. I never thought I would find myself in this situation…” Thompson wrote.
Some of his troubles began, he said in the letter, from “mounting pressure of the job and feelings of being unappreciated professionally and financially,” at the Fed.
That led to depression and a “concerning dependence on alcohol.”
In asking for a more lenient sentence, Thompson and his supporters remind Judge Lauck of his lack of a previous criminal record, his remorse and acceptance of responsibility for his crimes, and his cooperation with the investigation.
“It is unbelievably humbling and emasculating to tell your wife that you have made a giant mistake that is likely going to change the trajectory of our lives. I cried, she cried,” he wrote. “It’s also unbelievably hard to tell your kids that dad won’t be around for a while because he made some poor choices. But the reality is that’s what I deserve.”
He also apologized to his former employer.
“I want to convey a message of apology and regret to the Federal Reserve System, along with all my former colleagues there. I broke rules that they all live by every day,” he wrote.
Thompson’s former boss, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin, also submitted a letter to Judge Lauck last week, describing the damage such a crime can cause to the institution.
“Mr. Thompson’s actions violated our well established and well communicated policies, as well as the public’s trust. This deception provided him personal financial gain at the high cost of our integrity. The Bank’s reputation was maligned due to his willful disregard of our policies, false attestations and misrepresentation of his actions. For these reasons, we hope that you will consider a sentence appropriate for Mr. Thompson’s betrayal of our mission and of the American public,” Barkin wrote.
Federal prosecutors, while acknowledging Thompson’s cooperation and remorse, urged Judge Lauck not to be too lenient in her sentencing.
The government emphasized that Thompson’s scheme wasn’t a one-off momentary lapse in judgment, but rather a nearly four-year process in which he made dozens of insider trades and lied repeatedly on his disclosure statements to his employer.
“The defendant’s fraud scheme entailed his regular, repeated commitment to his chosen course of criminal conduct,” the government wrote. “The defendant executed his scheme to defraud for more than three years, and in the course of that time span, he chose – again and again, more than 60 times – to reoffend.”
The scheme, the government said, “came to its end not because he recovered his moral compass, but because he got caught.”
Thompson is represented in the case by attorneys Megan Rahman and John West of law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
His sentencing is set for Tuesday at 2 p.m.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s building downtown at 701 E. Byrd St.
A former longtime Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond employee will learn his fate this week for a nearly four-year scheme in which he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars by using illegal inside information to trade on the stocks of the same financial institutions he was tasked with examining.
Robert Brian Thompson, 44, is set to stand for sentencing on Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge M. Hannah Lauck for insider trading and making false statements while attempting to cover the tracks of those trades.
A resident of Chesterfield, Thompson has asked the court to consider a prison sentence of no more than 15 months, while federal prosecutors want him to serve 30-37 months.
Thompson was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Nov. 8, 2024, and pleaded guilty days later on Nov. 19. He admitted to using “material nonpublic information” that he obtained due to his position as bank examiner to make 69 trades, both purchases and sales, of tens of thousands of shares in more than seven different publicly traded financial institutions. The scheme ran from at least October 2020 through February 2024. He personally profited from those trades to the tune of $771,000, an amount he’ll be forced to forfeit once convicted.
Thompson worked at the Fed from 2004 until early last year, helping to regulate 18 large banks – those with assets of more than $100 billion.
Among the stocks that he traded on were Capital One and New York Community Bancorp, both of which were under Thompson’s purview at the Fed.
Robert Brian Thompson
For his Capital One trades, court filings state that in 2023 Thompson used information from internal Fed emails showing that the bank’s yet-to-be-released earnings would significantly exceed market estimates.
Just hours before Capital One was set to release those earnings publicly, Thompson purchased 7,500 shares of Capital One stock at a cost of $678,000, or $90.40 per share.
The stock jumped 9% the next day after the earnings release and Thompson sold his shares at $100.98 apiece, resulting in a profit of $79,000.
For his NYCB trades last year, Thompson again used non-public information from the Fed to find out that the bank would be announcing significant losses related to loans it took on as part of its acquisition of a then-failing Signature Bank.
Thompson purchased 1,600 options on NYCB shares at a cost of $14,000, which would allow him to profit if the bank’s stock price fell.
Two days later, NYCB’s earnings were announced and the stock dropped 37%. The next day Thompson sold his options, reaping a profit of approximately $505,000. That equaled a return on his investment of 3,745% in less than a week.
Federal regulations prohibit employees of the Federal Reserve System in Thompson’s position from trading in bank securities altogether. Employees are required to regularly file forms to declare their financial holdings.
Thompson admitted to making false statements by lying on that documentation and claiming he owned no such assets. In reality, he had a portfolio with more than $500,000 worth of bank stocks and options.
A native of South Boston, Virginia, Thompson was raised on a small cow farm in Victoria, Virginia, his father working for Norfolk Southern Railroad, according to court filings.
Thompson, his attorney and others, in letters written to Judge Lauck in recent weeks, describe his childhood as being greatly influenced by his parents’ financial struggles.
In describing his motivation for making the insider trades, Thompson told Lauck: “I wasn’t seeking an extravagant, lavish lifestyle. My intent was financial security for my children because I wanted to prevent them from feeling the impact of parents’ struggling financially and the subsequent domino-effect.”
Indeed, the profits from his trades weren’t spent, rather it were put into savings. Court records state he still has the money and intends to repay the required forfeited amount in full prior to his sentencing.
“I hope these payments will demonstrate my accountability and will offer some sense of reconciliation to the court and to my victims in this case,” Thompson wrote.
Thompson will be sentenced at the federal courthouse in Richmond.
Thompson attended Longwood University on a partial baseball scholarship, before a back injury ended his playing days. After graduating from Longwood, he later earned an MBA from the University of Richmond while working at the Fed.
He rose through the ranks at the Fed, got married, had two kids and lived an otherwise stand-up life, according to the letters to the judge.
“I am a middle-aged college-educated father and husband. I never thought I would find myself in this situation…” Thompson wrote.
Some of his troubles began, he said in the letter, from “mounting pressure of the job and feelings of being unappreciated professionally and financially,” at the Fed.
That led to depression and a “concerning dependence on alcohol.”
In asking for a more lenient sentence, Thompson and his supporters remind Judge Lauck of his lack of a previous criminal record, his remorse and acceptance of responsibility for his crimes, and his cooperation with the investigation.
“It is unbelievably humbling and emasculating to tell your wife that you have made a giant mistake that is likely going to change the trajectory of our lives. I cried, she cried,” he wrote. “It’s also unbelievably hard to tell your kids that dad won’t be around for a while because he made some poor choices. But the reality is that’s what I deserve.”
He also apologized to his former employer.
“I want to convey a message of apology and regret to the Federal Reserve System, along with all my former colleagues there. I broke rules that they all live by every day,” he wrote.
Thompson’s former boss, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin, also submitted a letter to Judge Lauck last week, describing the damage such a crime can cause to the institution.
“Mr. Thompson’s actions violated our well established and well communicated policies, as well as the public’s trust. This deception provided him personal financial gain at the high cost of our integrity. The Bank’s reputation was maligned due to his willful disregard of our policies, false attestations and misrepresentation of his actions. For these reasons, we hope that you will consider a sentence appropriate for Mr. Thompson’s betrayal of our mission and of the American public,” Barkin wrote.
Federal prosecutors, while acknowledging Thompson’s cooperation and remorse, urged Judge Lauck not to be too lenient in her sentencing.
The government emphasized that Thompson’s scheme wasn’t a one-off momentary lapse in judgment, but rather a nearly four-year process in which he made dozens of insider trades and lied repeatedly on his disclosure statements to his employer.
“The defendant’s fraud scheme entailed his regular, repeated commitment to his chosen course of criminal conduct,” the government wrote. “The defendant executed his scheme to defraud for more than three years, and in the course of that time span, he chose – again and again, more than 60 times – to reoffend.”
The scheme, the government said, “came to its end not because he recovered his moral compass, but because he got caught.”
Thompson is represented in the case by attorneys Megan Rahman and John West of law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
His sentencing is set for Tuesday at 2 p.m.
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