Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
By 
September 21, 2020 at 04:42 PM
(Credit: AP)
A small, privately run company and its president, owner and manager, Richard Ventrilla, scammed at least 22 clients out of nearly $1 million before Ventrilla was found dead at his home in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, earlier this month at age 61, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a complaint filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in Buffalo against Cygnus Capital Management and Ventrilla’s estate, the SEC said clients who invested a total of about $989,000 were defrauded.
The case was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, by order of Magistrate Judge Therese Wiley Dancks on Sept. 15, court documents show. The court was “advised that this matter was filed in the incorrect district,” according to the order.
From at least September 2015 through March 2020, Cygnus and Ventrilla — a Clarence, New York, resident convicted of extortion in 1999 — made false and misleading statements to investors and misappropriated assets from advisory clients, the regulator says.
Ventrilla allegedly told investors he would invest their funds in publicly traded securities and repay them with trading profit. He also promised them a rate of return of 7%-8%.
The complaint alleges that, in reality, Ventrilla had no basis for these statements and used only about 10% of total investor funds to trade securities, spending the majority of investor funds to instead support his lifestyle or repay other investors.
