Cetera Financial Group has fired an employee accused of making racist comments in an Instagram video that has gone viral.
In the widely circulated video on social media, a man is speaking to an Uber driver at the Denver airport, saying, “Get out of the country. I’ll get ICE.” He then shows his middle finger and says, “My country, not yours.”
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The video does not show how the conversation began. One Instagram account that circulated the video, therobbieharvey, said the Uber driver was merely checking if the man was his intended customer.
Although Cetera would not identify the man, social media accounts identified him as Thomas C. Powers, a Denver-based branch manager and financial advisor. Powers is still registered with Cetera, according to BrokerCheck, but his professional website and LinkedIn profiles are both currently inaccessible.
“We are aware of the video involving an individual identified as a Cetera employee,” Cetera said in a statement. “The conduct displayed was inconsistent with our standards. The individual is no longer an employee of Cetera. These comments do not reflect the views of the firm.”
Powers did not return a request for comment prior to publication.
According to his BrokerCheck, he’s been with Cetera for the last two years. Prior to that, he was with Northwestern Mutual. In 2004, he was terminated by New England Financial for violating standards of conduct and company policy around market timing. In his response to the action, Powers claimed the broker/dealer’s policy made no mention of not market-timing “sub-accounts,” and that the compliance department had allowed the activity for months.
“My personal participation in market timing was negligible, and my actions did not violate any investment-related statues, regulations, rules or industry standards of conduct,” he wrote.
Other advisors have gotten into trouble over alleged racist comments in the past. In 2021, Eileen Cure was fired by LPL Financial after videos surfaced on TikTok showing a Slack message where Cure wrote she did not want to interview Black applicants for a job opening at her firm, after an interview with a Black candidate. Cure then sued the broker/dealer for taking her clients.
In 2022, Bank of America fired James Iannazzo after a video of him shouting expletives and insults at a Connecticut Robeks outlet circulated widely on social media. The incident occurred after Iannazzo ordered a drink without peanut butter for his son, who has a peanut allergy, according to a statement from the Fairfield Police Department. He left the store, but returned to confront employees after his son had an allergic reaction that sent him to the hospital, police said.
Also, in May 2020, Franklin Templeton fired portfolio manager Amy Cooper after she was accused of racism for calling the police on a Black birdwatcher with whom she had words while walking her dog in Central Park. According to a video posted to then-Twitter (now X), Cooper threatens to call the police and tell them that there’s “an African American man threatening her life.”
