Sung Moo “Sam” Cho, 44, a former Citi investment adviser, faces up to 25 years in prison after admitting he took $3.5 million from a single client’s life savings, according to court filings reviewed by The New York Post.
Cho pleaded guilty on June 15 in Brooklyn federal court to wire fraud and investment adviser fraud. The filings say his victim, a wealthy and unnamed resident of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, lost the money between 2023 and 2025. Cho spent it on vacations and expensive jewelry, and used some to clear student loans and credit card debt.
How the scheme worked
The fraud began at Ameriprise Financial and carried on at Citi. A bio on Citi’s wealth management website, since deleted, said Cho joined in October 2025 after earlier jobs at Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch. Citi fired him in April.
At both firms he got past compliance by forging the client’s signature on authorization forms, court documents say. Then came the large wires the client never approved.
He did not send the money to himself. The filings say he wired it to a company bank account in Queens, owned by a co-conspirator who kept a fee and sent the rest back into accounts Cho controlled. “In exchange for facilitating the scheme, Cho paid the co-conspirator a fee,” prosecutors said.
Cho told the client the money sat in a legitimate investment and produced fake account statements to cover the gap. He also went into internal systems and erased the client’s personal identification information so automated alerts would not fire.
Fallout
A customer complaint to regulators ended it. In a regulatory filing, Citi said it fired Cho over allegations that he removed customer personal information from firm systems to create a statement the firm had not generated, and over his refusal to cooperate with an internal investigation.
FINRA, the Wall Street watchdog, barred him for life on June 25 after he refused to hand over a single record. He can no longer register as a broker or work with any FINRA-member firm.
Federal prosecutors filed a two-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York. Cho waived a trial and pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack. Wire fraud carries a maximum of 20 years and investment adviser fraud a maximum of five.
No sentencing date has been set. Cho is free on a $200,000 bond and has surrendered his passport. The government wants full restitution for the victim and plans to seize luxury property, jewelry or cash tied to the fraud, and, if he has already spent it, his other assets.
A Citi spokesperson said: “In 2025, this individual was only employed for the last three months and he was subsequently terminated in early 2026.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York declined to comment. The Post also sought comment from Ameriprise and from Cho’s lawyer, Norman Spencer.
