A former Ameriprise advisor who conned aged purchasers he met by means of church out of tens of millions of {dollars} has been sentenced to 168 months in federal jail.
Paul Ricky Mata, 58, was handed the 14 12 months sentence Monday within the courtroom of U.S. District Choose R. Gary Klausner. The Oceanside, California, man was additionally ordered to pay $12,560,385 in restitution to his greater than 100 victims.
This summer time, Mata pleaded responsible to 11 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, one depend of constructing a false assertion in a chapter continuing, one depend of concealing property in chapter, and one depend of constructing a false oath or account in relation to a chapter case.
In response to courtroom paperwork, Mata ran an actual property scheme from August 2008 to September 2015 that allowed him to defraud purchasers of greater than $12.5 million. It concerned Mata convincing his victims to pour their financial savings into a number of of his companies after which utilizing their investments to stay a snug life.
He additionally did so with out disclosing his prolonged disciplinary historical past to the individuals he deceived. That included actions taken in opposition to him by the states of Nevada and California; a one-year suspension and $10,000 effective imposed by FINRA; and a three-year suspension by the Licensed Monetary Planner Board for misconduct.
Courtroom paperwork mentioned that a lot of Mata’s victims had been fellow members of his congregation who invested their retirement financial savings.
“He prayed with them, professed to share values and beliefs with them, and he acted like they had been his buddies,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “Furthermore, a lot of his victims are at present retired, and/or had been within the means of retiring when [Mata] suggested them to enter into his dangerous investments based mostly on false pretenses.”
Veteran securities lawyer Invoice Singer mentioned even 14 years isn’t sufficient to make up for Mata’s crimes or deter different dangerous actors from following in his footsteps sooner or later down the road.
Singer, who labored as a regional lawyer for FINRA predecessor the Nationwide Affiliation of Securities Sellers, mentioned criminals like Mata by no means consider they are going to be caught. For them, headlines of con artist advisors being sentenced to vital jail time is simply one other problem for them to beat.
“They are saying ‘I am smarter than that,’ or ‘I do know what they did improper.’ (Mata) thought he was too sensible. And when he obtained caught, he figured he would attraction his method out of it,” Singer mentioned. “He is in all probability extra shocked than anyone that he’ll be doing arduous time.”
The saddest half, Singer mentioned, is that Mata’s victims needed to wait greater than a decade for some type of decision however have little likelihood of ever regaining what was taken from them. With a bankrupt felon because the particular person ordered to pay restitution, Singer wished the courts “good luck” in gathering.
“This all began in August 2008. We’re virtually 14 years from 2008, and 14 years later, Mr. Mata has lived an excellent life after he gutted the lives of his victims,” Singer mentioned. “Assuming he lives lengthy sufficient to complete out his jail time period, he’ll be in his 70s when he comes out. However his shopper’s lives are devastated, and there’s actually not going to be any cash that he is going to have the ability to give you that is going to come back near the $12 million that he stole.”
Courtroom paperwork mentioned Mata’s scheme concerned getting his purchasers to put money into an organization known as Secured Capital. Mata offered it as an actual property program that invested in “government-backed tax liens,” “asset-backed deed certificates,” and distressed business and residential properties.
Mata promised his victims annual return charges of 5% to 10%, courtroom paperwork mentioned. In actuality, investments in Secured Capital had vital loss dangers and didn’t flip a revenue from 2011 onward.
In the meantime, Mata used investor funds to pay for issues like a $197,000 down fee on his private residence in Upland, loans to himself and a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} transferred into his private financial institution accounts.
Mata additionally made false statements on chapter courtroom paperwork in October 2016, claiming that he had not filed for chapter safety inside the earlier eight years. Mata had filed for chapter in June 2010.
Throughout his chapter proceedings, Mata hid a few of his private property — together with a 2008 Mini Cooper car and a 2001 Jeep — from the federal government and from his collectors. Throughout a November 2016 chapter listening to, Mata lied when discussing the switch of one of many autos and his Upland residence to members of his household.
Monday’s sentencing is the most recent in an extended checklist of fines and punishments handed all the way down to Mata over the previous a number of years.
In 2015, the SEC filed a civil motion in opposition to Mata and two enterprise associates in connection to the true property rip-off. Later that 12 months, the SEC obtained a judgment in opposition to Mata that enjoined him from violating securities legal guidelines and ordered him to pay $11,748,831.
Additionally in 2015, the California Division of Enterprise Oversight obtained a everlasting injunction in opposition to Mata, in addition to a $14 million restitution order and $6.3 million in civil penalties.
Victims obtained $1.65 million by means of an SEC-appointed receiver in 2017, and a California grand jury indicted Mata in 2019.
Ameriprise paid $100,000 in a settlement with three of the victims in 2019; a third-party on-line brokerage and a church that had employed Mata to show monetary lessons resolved different shopper claims of damages, in line with attorneys for the purchasers.
window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({
appId : '948048028649511',
xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' }); };
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
Source link