Event Details
Invited back by popular demand, Patrick Kuhse will give his life story this year at our September 20th breakfast program. 2 CE for CFP Ethics will be offered.
Upbeat, outgoing, cheerful and modest, Patrick Kuhse would not appear to be a man with a horrible and horribly painful past. Nothing in his DNA or upbringing would have led anybody to suspect that he would one day become an international fugitive and serve four years in prison for, among other things, money laundering, bribing a public official, and conspiracy. "We've certainly analyzed that to death in my family," says Kuhse. "But no, I had a Mayberry-like childhood with loving parents in a farming town of 2,000 people in Iowa. Very low-key, very happy."
Fast forward to the 1980s. Kuhse earned his CFP® designation in 1986 and until 1994 was a financial planner, regional manager with two national securities firms, and the principal of a firm in which he maintained a personal client base along with providing financial products and services for independent advisors nationwide. In 1989, an acquaintance who had oversight of bond trading for the Oklahoma State Treasurer's Office asked Kuhse to bid on bond transactions, encouraging him to "bump up" his commission. Kuhse paid the acquaintance what amounted to kickbacks. Eventually, a fired and disgruntled state employee tipped off the FBI about what was going on.
Kuhse ultimately fled the United States, was indicted, and finally returned to face the charges against him. Sentenced to 71 months in prison, he served four years in Oklahoma, California, and Nevada. "The Feds were mad at me because I had left the country and so they kept moving me around," he says. Kuhse also was ordered to pay $3.89 million in restitution to the state of Oklahoma. (Needless to say, he was stripped of his CFP® designation.) His community service requirement has turned into a full-time career as a speaker. Since 2001, Kuhse has given hundreds of presentations to major universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell; including several of the Financial Planning Association's chapters; and law enforcement agencies. The CFP Board has authorized Kuhse's presentations for up to two hours of ethics continuing education credits. He also was named Ethics Fellow-In-Residence for the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona and at the Sawyer Business School in Suffolk University in Boston.
Don't miss this dynamic speaker with a profound "ethics" message...
