Michael Steven Poret, UBS Broker, Accused Of Smashing Windows With A Slingshot

Broker Arrested For... Smashing Windows With A Slingshot?

Usually when financial brokers get arrested, it's for something like embezzling millions of dollars or misleading clients about bad investments. It's less common that they get pulled up for smashing windows with a slingshot.

Yet a broker at UBS Financial Services was arrested last week in Encino, California, in connection with a string of more than 70 vandalism incidents in the Los Angeles area. The broker, whose name is Michael Steven Poret and not Dennis the Menace, is suspected of breaking windows at dozens of local businesses, the Los Angeles Times reports. (Hat tip to Dealbreaker.)

In true West Coast style, whoever's been smashing the windows evidently didn't even get out of their car to do it. Surveillance footage captured a "graying man" firing marbles with a slingshot "from the driver's seat of his car," according to the LAT. Police arrested Poret on July 3 after noticing a slingshot in his vehicle during a traffic stop, and a subsequent raid of his house turned up further slingshots and marbles similar to the ones found at the crime scenes.

This isn't the worst thing a UBS employee has ever been accused of -- that title probably still belongs to Kweku Adoboli, the former trader who will stand trial in September for allegedly losing billions of dollars on unauthorized deals.

Still, there's something particularly chilling about this kind of crime. If a broker decides to go rogue and terrorize his city with a slingshot, neither the Dodd-Frank Act nor the Brady Bill will have any power to stop him.

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