Says she was fired because of relationship with man indicted for Ponzi scheme
In 2007 Lindy Boville, a trader in Toronto, was recruited by RBC Capital (a division of Royal Bank of Canada) to join its office in New York. During that time she says she became one of the firm’s top traders, generating up to US$8 million in commissions. She also generated an on-again, off-again relationship with James Nicholson, a hedge fund manager who, in April, was indicted for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of US$150 million. RBC fired Boville in March, but now she’s struck back with a lawsuit that alleges the bank used her relationship with Nicholson as a pretext to push her out of the way and hand her accounts to her male colleagues. Boville claims that during her time at RBC she was constantly subjected to sexually charged comments. She says one co-worker asked “Did that dress shrink at the dry cleaners?” while another used the word “sensy” in an e-mail instead of “sexy” so that the bank’s monitoring system wouldn’t red flag his language. The bank says it fired her because she showed poor judgment in helping Nicholson raise money for his hedge fund, and not because of her her affair with him. Boville counters she never did any work for Nicholson in the first place, but her male co-workers did, and they’re all still employed.