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Ex-Jerico lawyer gets 61/2 years for $8M Ponzi scheme
BY ROBERT E. KESSLER | robert.kessler@newsday.com
March 7, 2009
A former Jericho attorney was sentenced Friday to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to repay his clients $8 million after defrauding them in a Ponzi scheme and other financial frauds, according to officials.
Most of Stuart Moshell's 21 victims since 1985 were longtime clients, neighbors or friends, federal prosecutors said.
The Ponzi scheme involved promising his victims up to 195 percent interest by investing in bridge loans on imaginary real-estate transactions, prosecutors said. The other frauds included stealing money from escrow accounts and obtaining mortgages on properties he did not control, according to court records.
Before he was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, Moshell addressed Judge Joanna Seybert and a courtroom filled with many of his victims.
"I'd like to say to the victims ... to my family, I'm ... appalled by the actions that I committed. I took your trust. My intention was always to pay [you back]. ... I stand before you a broken man. Please believe, I never intended for any of you to be hurt. I was in a hole. I didn't know how to get out. ... I'm repulsed by my actions."
Defense attorney James Druker said Moshell began defrauding his clients after losing $300,000 in a financial transaction, which he did not detail.
But Druker pleaded for leniency for his client, saying Moshell has not only lost his job and his family has left him, but he is so destitute he was living in his car. Druker said he has taken pity on his client and allowed him to live in his beach house. Moshell has lost his law license.
Although Moshell's actions amount to "a self-inflicted wound," Druker said, the man's life is "completely destroyed."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Boeckmann declined to comment.
Neither Moshell's statement nor Druker's plea seemed to elicit any sympathy from the victims. One, who did not wish to be identified, said before Moshell's court appearance Friday that he had shown "no gesture of remorse at any time a lavish lifestyle." He said Moshell, whom he had trusted to represent him in a divorce action, had instead stripped him of assets.
During Moshell's previous court appearances, some of his victims accused him of taking their money to spend on luxury items, including BMWs for his daughter.
Louisville Lawyers , Orange County Lawyers
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S.E.C. Report Details Lapses i
