“Another Email Account Impersonating a Banker Working for [Plaintiff] Invited … Recipients … to Join a Fictitious Neo-Nazi Banking Club”

In today’s decision in Raymond James & Assocs. v. Saba by Judge Matthew W. McFarland (S.D. Ohio), Saba had been an intern at Raymond James & Associates, a financial firm, but didn’t get a full-time offer. He then allegedly did the following (according to plaintiff’s Complaint):

On November 4, 2024, using several fictitious email accounts, Defendant began a cyber-harassment campaign (“the Campaign”) that spread false and malicious information about Plaintiffs. The emails, sent to fellow Raymond James employees, as well as individuals outside the company, accused Plaintiffs of illegal insider trading and rape; one email targeted Redvanly’s girlfriend at her place of employment and accused her of illegal insider trading.

In addition to the false accusations of criminal activity, some emails attempted to implicate Plaintiffs Redvanly [Defendant’s former mentor at the firm] and VanBenthuysen [another firm employee] in inappropriate romantic relationships. In fact, on December 8, 2024, an email sent to both Raymond James employees and outside email addresses intended to impersonate VanBenthuysen and another employee; the email implied that the two were engaged in an extramarital affair and included sexually explicit images. A separate false account further distributed this email to numerous members of the investment banking community, including firms that compete with Raymond James.

Defendant sent a similarly explicit email on December 15, 2024, implicating VanBenthuysen and a different Raymond James employee by purporting to report explicit communications between the two; this email was similarly sent to both Raymond James employees and external recipients. On December 21, 2024, yet another fictitious email account sent an email to both Raymond James employees and external recipients, this time impersonating VanBenthuysen’s wife and including another sexually explicit image taken from the internet. Plaintiffs allege that this conduct continued throughout the month of December 2024.

Then, on December 30, 2024, another email account impersonating a banker working for Raymond James invited numerous recipients external to Raymond James to join a fictitious neo-Nazi banking club. The email directed responses to VanBenthuysen’s Raymond James email address and included a PDF attachment that advertised the fictitious neo-Nazi club. Raymond James’ Cyber Threat Center, which had been working to uncover the perpetrator of these emails, examined the metadata on the attached PDF. The metadata revealed that Defendant was the author of the PDF.

On January 3, 2025, an additional false account sent a similar neo-Nazi banking club email with an attached PDF, and Defendant was again listed as the author of that PDF. The Cyber Threat Center also discovered that the visible digits of the recovery phone number for one of the fictitious email addresses impersonating VanBenthuysen matched Defendant’s phone number. Further investigation revealed that the recovery email for the fake VanBenthuysen account was another email address used in the Campaign. The Cyber Threat Center’s findings led to the discovery of more connections between the multiple email accounts used in the Campaign. These email accounts all shared Defen

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