Leon Vaccarelli Charged with Defrauding Elderly Customers $1 Million

SEC Charges CT Advisor Leon Vaccarelli with Allegedly Defrauding Elderly Clients

According to a press release, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Leon Vaccarelli of Waterbury, Connecticut, and his company with allegedly fraudulently enticing several elderly customers to invest with him and then spending their money on himself.

The SEC alleges that between 2012 and 2017, Vaccarelli purportedly defrauded at least nine clients, some who were elderly, of more than $1 million.  The SEC is reportedly seeking an asset freeze against him and his firm, Lux Financial Services. Vaccarelli was previously registered with the Investment Center in Waterbury CT, an independent broker-dealer, from February 2011 through August 2017 when he was purportedly discharged for failing “to comply with company policy regarding access to his office and computer during an examination.”

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Vaccarelli deposited customer funds into his personal and business bank accounts instead of investing the customers’ money in such things as conventional brokerage accounts and separately managed accounts, as promised. He allegedly commingled the funds with his own money and used them for his own purposes, and in some instances, he purportedly used customer funds to pay returns to earlier investors.

The complaint seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest, penalties, and permanent injunctive relief.

According to FINRA, in November 2015, Vaccarelli consented to the sanctions and to the entry of findings that he exercised discretion in customers’ accounts without written authorization from the customers to place discretionary trades. His member firm had reportedly not approved and accepted the accounts as discretionary. The findings stated that Vaccarelli also allegedly falsely certified that he did not handle any retail (non-advisory) customer accounts on a discretionary basis on four annual firm compliance questionnaires.

According to his FINRA BrokerCheck report, Vaccarelli was suspended from the securities industry for one month and required to pay a fine of $7,500.00.

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This information, which is publicly available site, has been provided by The White Law Group.

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