Robert Brennan – First Jersey Securities
He courted U.S. presidents. They didn't pardon his fraud.
As Robert E. Brennen declares with the title of his 2023 memoir, “The Record Stands.”
The octogenarian ex-con was once a high-flying penny-stock huckster, who lured unsuspecting investors with flashy TV commercials and connections to the nation’s elite, including President Ronald Reagan.
Brennan, a Seaton Hall University graduate, founded First Jersey Securities in 1974 with main offices in New York City and Red Bank, N.J. By the mid-1980s, it grew to about 36 branch offices nationwide. At its zenith, it boasted perhaps 2,000 employees and more than 500,000 accounts.
Many of First Jersey’s customers were seniors who lost their investments when the worthless stocks they were pressured into buying inevitably crashed.
By 1987, First Jersey filed bankruptcy. In 1994, Brennan lost a civil fraud lawsuit to the Securities and Exchange Commission and was ordered to pay $75 million to settle the claims. But only a portion of the ordered disgorgements and fines have been collected.
Instead, Brennan filed personal bankruptcy in 1995. And he was soon charged with hiding millions of assets from his creditors using offshore accounts, municipal bonds that he stashed in his basement and casino chips from Mirage Resorts in Las Vegas.
In 2001, he was sentenced to more than 9 years for money laundering and bankruptcy fraud. But oh what a run he had for a guy who started out in the boring profession of accounting.
Brennan invested much of his loot in horse racing. He founded publicly traded International Thoroughbred Breeders and financed the reconstruction of the fire-damaged Garden State Park race track in Cherry Hill, N.J. He also owned and raced Thoroughbreds under the prescient name, Due Process Stable.
Brennan hosted Reagan and President George H.W. Bush at charity events and golf outings. He mingled with many other political and business heavyweights, as well as NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells and College Basketball great Mike Krzyzewski.
Celebrity photos helped him craft the persona of a financial wizard with friends in high places. In a recent interview (attached below), he even touts a photo of himself with Pope John Paul II.
In 2001, Forbes magazine called him, “a swindler of a recognizable type: totally unscrupulous, with the nerve and audacity of a second-story man, but also with a touch of class that has always given him friends in high places.”
Brennan once ran commercials in which he flew a helicopter over the New York City skyline, patriotically promising opportunities and inviting viewers to “Come Grow With Us.”
He has lived a quieter life since his release from prison in 2011, though he’s worked hard to recast his life story.
He tells his tale without a hint of remorse in a January 2024 YouTube video, boasting of his many years of success followed by “a 10-year holiday in federal prison.”
His revisionist storytelling is an inspiration for white-collar criminals everywhere.