Fired UBS Advisor Reignites Palm Beach Scandal over Rich Widow

Craig Price, a former UBS AG senior vice president, was more than a little surprised when he saw the $2,600 tab he and colleagues had racked up at an upscale restaurant in Palm Beach, Florida. It was not the actual size of the bill that shocked Price, but the person who paid it: Helga Marston, a sickly, 90-year-old UBS client. More disconcerting was the fact that Marston had not been in attendance. Her broker, Dennis Melchior, a UBS employee and Marston’s trust manager had used trust funds to pay the tab. Also in attendance was Melchior’s girlfriend, the now infamous Nancy Tsai, a long-time confidant of Marston who also had power-of-attorney over the trust.

As Price starting digging deeper, he found that Tsai used trust funds to buy a Bentley, take a private jet for a vacation to Toronto, and also made an attempt to remove funds to buy a penthouse. Price alerted his superiors of the activity and Melchior was subsequently fired. Tsai was later arrested for exploiting an elderly person and grand theft auto. This behavior conflicted with her public persona as a charitable donor to a number of causes. Few were aware that her generosity was funded by someone else’s cash. Unfortunately, Marston passed away the day after Tsai’s arrest and all the charges were subsequently dropped.

All of these events spanned over the course of 2014, but another chapter of this story has since been unfolding. Price, the initial whistleblower, was fired by UBS who claimed he traded non-public information. Price claims this is a lie and that UBS is retaliating for his actions related to the Marston incident. More generally, Price is claiming that there could have been no way that UBS executives were unaware of Tsai and Melchior’s intimate relationship and their connection with Marston. UBS has denied these allegations.

Despite this unpleasantness, Price’s unplanned departure has not been a total loss, as he has been successful in pulling a number of clients away from the company. When Lynn Scheel visited UBS to pick up paperwork in preparation to move with Price, she said she was met in the lobby by a UBS advisor who said, “I can’t believe you’re going with that criminal.” Undaunted, Scheel moved her assets to Price.

See Neil Weinberg, Fired UBS Advisor Reignites Palm Beach Scandal over Rich Widow, Private Wealth, August 16, 2017.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.