A former stock loan trader at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp in New York received well over $100,000 of cash kickbacks by steering orders to other brokerage firms, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

In a civil complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, the SEC alleged that the trader, Salvatore Zangari, from March 2004 to December 2005 received the money from a Brooklyn-based finder, Clinton Management Ltd.

It said the 33-year-old Manhattan resident accepted the payments in exchange for sending orders to other brokerages that paid fees to the finder for locating securities to be borrowed and loaned.

In total, Zangari took approximately $100,000 to $150,000 in cash kickbacks from Anthony Lupo, a Clinton principal, the SEC said. Zangari deposited some of the payments into an account, and in January 2006 withdrew most of the $65,600 balance for a down payment on an apartment, it added.

Zangari's misconduct defrauded and otherwise harmed Morgan Stanley and (Bank) of America because he purposely arranged stock loan transactions on their behalf at borrowing and lending rates that were designed to generate finder fee payments rather than to maximize the firms' profits, the complaint said.

The lawsuit seeks for Zangari to give up improper gains and pay a civil fine.

Efforts to reach Zangari were unsuccessful. Lupo was not immediately available for comment, representatives of Clinton said. The SEC and Morgan Stanley did not immediately return calls for comment. Bank of America had no immediate comment.

According to the SEC, Zangari left Morgan Stanley in May 2005, worked at Bank of America from May 2005 through October 2006, and worked at UBS AG from October 2006 to July 2009.

The case is SEC v. Zangari, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 10-01058.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Morgan Stanley New York