This triathlete stockbroker couldn’t outrun the feds.
Amateur athlete Benjamin Chouchane was charged yesterday with scamming millions of dollars in bonuses by overcharging his clients for stock trades.
Chouchane, 38, of the Upper West Side, appeared in Manhattan federal court sporting a white T-shirt from last month’s “tune-up” run for the 2012 New York City Marathon, in which he placed 189th overall.
He has competed in 57 road races and triathlons during the past four years, according to his Web profile on athlinks.com.
Also charged yesterday was Chouchane’s former colleague, Marek Leszczynski, 43, of Miami.
Both men are accused of secretly inflating the execution prices for tens of thousands of trades while working for Linkbrokers Derivatives in Manhattan.
The feds say the scheme helped Chouchane pocket more than $4.8 million in bonuses between 2007 and 2009, while Leszczynski collected more than $3.7 million in bonuses during the same period.
A third former Linkbrokers employee, Henry Condron, 33, of Manhattan, pleaded guilty to securities-fraud charges during a secret court hearing on Tuesday and is apparently cooperating with authorities.
Chouchane’s lawyer, Guy Oksenhendler, declined comment, but Leszczynski’s laywer, Joe Tacopina, said his client “steadfastly maintains his innocence.”
A spokesman for ICAP, which bought Linkbrokers’ British parent company in 2008, declined to comment.