Robert E. Brennan

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Robert E. Brennan (born 1944) was an American businessman who built the infamous penny stock brokerage firm, First Jersey Securities. The firm specialized in promoting "pump and dump" penny stocks to unsuspecting investors - many of them elderly - who lost their entire investments when the stocks inevitably crashed. As a result of this penny stock scheme, Brennan became a target of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. First Jersey itself went bankrupt in 1987 and Brennan was found guilty of securities fraud in 1994. The US Government ordered him to pay $75 million to settle the fraud claims.

Brennan declared bankruptcy in 1995 but committed another fraud when he did not declare all of his assets to the court. Brennan withheld from the bankruptcy court the fact that he held $500,000 in casino chips that he had purchased (and later cashed out of after his bankruptcy) and $4 million in municipal bonds he kept in his basement. He then directed an associate to liquidate the bonds overseas and invest them in stocks, which netted him $16 million in ill-gotten gains.

In 2001 Brennan was found guilty on bankruptcy and fraud charges and was sentenced to a prison term of nine years and two months. On appeal, in 2003 the sentence was upheld. As of 2007, Brennan is an inmate at the US Bureau of Prison's Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey. His projected release date is 26 December 2011.

A major benefactor to Seton Hall University, following his conviction the university's Board of Governors had Brennan's name removed from a recreation center on its campus in South Orange, New Jersey. Brennan is an alumnus of Seton Hall University and sat on its Board of Regents.

Brennan was also a Certified Public Accountant but his license was revoked as a result of his criminal conviction.

Brennan also built and owned the prestigious Due Process Stable Golf Club in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey, where he lived until his arrest in 2001.^[1]