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Swanson to be sentenced Monday
Originally published 09:57 a.m., March 22, 2009
Updated 12:00 p.m., March 23, 2009
A former Piper Jaffray broker with Fergus Falls ties will be sentenced Monday for allegedly bilking money from the trust of a Fergus Falls woman who is now deceased.
Charles Swanson, who in January listed his address as 11 LaCosta Circle in Dellwood, Minn., pleaded guilty Jan. 20 to a theft charge in which he was accused of stealing money from the trust of Jean Dahling between August 2001 and December 2006.
Swanson will be sentenced in Otter Tail County District Court at 1 p.m. Monday. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000.
Court records state that Swanson met Dahling through their church. In addition, Dahling was a teacher in the Fergus Falls School District and Swanson served as a member of the Fergus Falls Board of Education.
“My children, a couple of them, had her as a teacher so I knew Jean Dahling for many years,” Swanson told the court in January.
When Dahling began estate planning she asked Swanson to serve as the trustee of her trust fund, court records state.
Dahling died in 2001. Between August 2001 and December 2006 Swanson removed funds from Dahling’s trust account and used the funds for his own personal use, he told the court in January.
In 2006 Swanson was banned from working for the New York Stock Exchange because of the incident.
While details of the theft weren’’t detailed during the January plea hearing, an August 2007 hearing before the New York Stock Exchange indicated Swanson was terminated from a Fergus Falls branch of Piper Jaffray on Sept. 22, 2006 for misappropriating the funds in Dahling’s trust.
Dahling established the trust fund in 1992. Eight years later Swanson changed the mailing address on the account from Dahling’s home address to a Piper Jaffray post office box.
At the time of Dahling’s death in 2001 there was $128,000 in the account. After her death Swanson allegedly wrote more than 34 checks to himself on the account totaling $214,000.
The theft was formally reported to Fergus Falls police by City Attorney Rolf Nycklemoe in November 2007 because the city was a beneficiary of the trust and the measure would initite the legal process.
The New York Stock Exchange found Swanson guilty by motion of default of misappropriations and failing to cooperate in an investigation by the NYSE’s Regulations Division of Enforcement Financial Services in August 2006. In September 2007 Swanson was permanently banned from working for the New York Stock Exchange.
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