By Kenneth Corbin

The Northern Trust Company filed a lawsuit Aug. 22 accusing a former employee of breaching his fiduciary duty, stealing from a client, and skirting its security protocols to avoid detection. The Chicago-based financial services company is asking a federal court to hold Christopher Walters liable for punitive and compensatory damages and interest.

The complaint alleges Walters engaged in a multiyear campaign to steal from a Northern Trust client for whom he provided trust services, calling his conduct "outrageous and intentional" and a "blatant fraud."

Walters couldn't immediately be reached for comment. Court records don't indicate that he has retained a lawyer in the case.

Northern Trust doesn't make clear the precise duration of the alleged fraud in its complaint, though that filing includes allegedly doctored emails from June 2016, and alleges that Walters altered his conduct involving the client's account in response to a policy change the firm enacted in 2015. The complaint also states that Walters left the company in November 2024, "prior to his scheme being revealed." It doesn't specify the circumstances under which Walters left the firm.

Northern Trust describes Walters as a relationship manager in its wealth management division based in Florida. Though he doesn't appear to have been registered as an investment advisor, Walters owed his trust clients a fiduciary duty, according to the complaint.

The firm says that Walters' responsibilities included authenticating client requests for disbursements from their accounts "and relaying such requests to others at Northern Trust who would approve and initiate the transaction." That is where the alleged fraud occurred.

The complaint alleges that Walters forged a close bond with the client over several years and took steps to "isolate" his colleagues at the firm from the client, ensuring that he controlled the relationship.

Walters "routinely" handled disbursement requests from the client, relaying them to his colleagues to process the withdrawal. "Most of these were legitimate transactions," Northern Trust says. "However, others were not."

Walter allegedly made a series of transaction requests purportedly on behalf of the client that he directed to himself, going to "great lengths" to conceal the fraud, according to the complaint. Northern Trust didn't specify how many fraudulent requests Walters allegedly made or for how much money.

"We take our responsibility to protect our clients and their assets extremely seriously," the firm said in a statement. "When we learned that a former employee engaged in fraudulent transactions from a client's account, we responded swiftly and appropriately -- reporting the matter to the authorities, cooperating fully with their investigation, and retaining a prominent law firm and a forensic accounting firm to investigate the incident." Northern Trust says the outside investigation is ongoing. It wasn't clear if any other charges would be forthcoming.

The firm says it has paid the client the full amount lost in the alleged fraud, "plus associated lost opportunity costs." It also said it has been working to create "even stricter oversight protocols and safeguards" to prevent a similar situation from recurring.

"We believe our filed complaint speaks for itself and, due to the sensitivity of this matter, are not able to comment further," the firm said.

Northern Trust alleges that Walters doctored emails from the client to indicate that they were disbursement requests and submitted those messages to his colleagues to secure the transfers. He also allegedly altered credit card statements, substituting the client's name for his own.

Northern Trust alleges that Walters used the money to pay his credit card bills and to support a fitness-gym venture, an outside business that Northern Trust says he should have reported to his employer, but didn't.

"Instead, he secretly funded the gym via direct wire payments to a business checking account and rent payments towards a lease that was held by the business, all while misrepresenting the payments as going to the client-victim," the complaint says.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 28, 2025 08:51 ET (12:51 GMT)

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