ABOUT

PLATO BOUGAS

My name is Plato Bougas, and I am a third-year Business Administration major with a concentration in Finance at the University of Southern California. I have been on the Dean's List, Distinguished top 5%, Honor Roll with High Distinction, and USC's Hilltop Scholar Award.

I have had the incredible opportunity of interning with the United States Department of Justice in the Financial Terrorism Division. Fraud and its impact on international banking systems is an increasingly global concern. The costs of addressing the consequences of fraudulent conduct are growing exponentially.

I interned at an Investment Bank that focused on mergers and acquisitions. I created a pitchbook for a deal that went through with Bed Bath & Beyond for
$8 Million.

I have also had the privilege of interning with Morgan Stanley as a equity research summer analyst in the Los Angeles office. It was here where I was able to learn how to manage multimillion-dollar funds. I have developed skills in financial modeling and portfolio management.

Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are becoming more and more prevalent, sophisticated and international. Our team was responsible for the seizure of federal debts and the forfeiture of assets related to criminal activity. The Asset Recovery Division’s primary objective is to use best efforts to divest criminals of their property and return it to victims of crime.

The federal government has given me a unique perspective on the financial markets. Our department was tasked with detecting financial crimes. I had spent a year working to detect offshore accounts, embezzlement, oil fraud, healthcare fraud, and a variety of many complex pyramid schemes. One of the biggest cases my team brought down involved a sophisticated money-laundering scheme where cash was temporarily stored in Range Rovers and transported via container ship to an off-shore account in Nigeria.

I interned at an Investment Bank in Downtown Dallas called National Transaction Advisors. Our Middle-Market investment bank focused primarily on mergers and acquisitions. I learned how to identify potential clients with salesforce software and how to value potential investments in the energy and technology sector. My biggest accomplishment, while I worked for the investment bank, was my work on a pitchbook that facilitated an $8 million dollar deal with Bed Bath & Beyond and a new product called Wine Wand.

This past summer I was with Morgan Stanley in the Los Angeles office. As a summer analyst, I was tasked with building financial models to forecast the performance of different securities. I presented different diversified portfolio structures to my managing director. Morgan Stanley was conservative in their investments, so my projects included many well known blue-chip equities. The firm had me pitch new market opportunities, predict and quantify risk, identify undervalued corporations on the exchange, and track portfolio performance.