Barred Broker Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison Over $7M Ponzi Scheme

What You Need to Know

In addition to five years in prison, Lee D. Weiss was ordered to pay $7.5 million in restitution and a $250,000 fine for scamming his clients.
He was also sentenced to serve three years of supervised release after completing his five-year sentence.
Some of the clients’ funds were used to make car, credit card and country club payments, as well as for tickets to Boston Red Sox games.

A former broker and advisor was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison after being convicted of investment advisory fraud. According to court documents, his clients lost more than $7 million under a Ponzi scheme.

Lee D. Weiss, 51, of Roslyn, New York, and Newton, Massachusetts, was also ordered to pay $7.5 million in restitution and a $250,000 fine, and to serve three years of supervised release.

In March, Weiss pleaded guilty to investment advisor fraud in connection with this scheme to defraud his clients.

“Mr. Weiss acknowledges that he breached his duties to his clients and deeply regrets the losses he caused them,” Lisa A. Mathewson, an attorney who represented him in the case, told ThinkAdvisor on Wednesday. “He has pledged to make restitution and looks forward to resuming that effort when he is released.”

Weiss was the principal of Family Endowment Partners, an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had an office in West Chester, Pennsylvania, before it was closed by order of the SEC, Jacqueline C. Romero, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in a news release Tuesday.

The SEC also barred Weiss from the industry in 2016, according to his report on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck website.