One month after terminating two senior executives, and following the resignation of a third executive, over alleged ethics violations, iPayment has appointed Robert Purcell as vice president of finance and chief accounting officer. The debit and credit card processing services company also hired Christian Murray as vice president of sales, independent sales groups.

Purcell joins iPayment from Intuit, where he served as vice president finance for Intuit Financial Services. From 1997 to 2009, Purcell was with Amgen, where he served in various financial capacities of increasing responsibility, most recently as executive director of finance for global Operations. From 1993 to 1997, Purcell was at Deloitte & Touche, serving as audit senior for business assurance and advisory services.

Murray most recently served as president and CEO of ePaySpot Payment Software, which provides merchants and businesses with software solutions to collect electronic bill payments. From 2004 to 2011, he was vice president/national director for Sage Software/Global eTelecom. Prior to 2004, Murray served for two years as director of business development for retail control solutions for POSitouch, a provider of point of sale software and hardware systems for restaurant and hospitality services.

Investigation Background

In a Form 8-K filing dated Sept. 12, iPayment and iPayment Holdings announced that it had fired on Sept. 6 Robert Torino, formerly executive vice president and chief operating officer and executive vice president of iPayment. Torino additionally served as chief operating officer and assistant secretary of iPayment Holdings.

That same day, iPayment also fired John Hong, formerly vice president of information technology. The Form 8-K filing stated only that the terminations resulted from “alleged violations by such employees of the company's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.” It did not provide any further details.

On Sept. 7, Bronson Quon, formerly vice president and corporate controller, also resigned. "Quon has agreed to cooperate with the company and is assisting in the investigation," the filing stated.

In connection with the investigation, recent allegations of misconduct have also been made concerning Nasir Shakouri, formerly senior vice president of sales and marketing, who resigned in May.