New York insurance agent pleads guilty to running $50 million Ponzi

An upstate New York tax preparer and insurance agent on Tuesday pleaded guilty to charges of running a decades-long Ponzi scheme that stole more than $50 million from close to 1,000 investors.

The agent, Miles Burton Marshall, was based in Hamilton, and solicited unsuspecting clients to invest millions of dollars into his so-called “Eight Percent Fund,” claiming that their funds would be primarily used for real estate investments, according to a statement Monday by Attorney General Letitia James. 

“Instead, Marshall used these funds to pay investment returns to prior investors and to cover the expenses of his other businesses and his personal expenses,” according to the statement. “Marshall also spent his investors’ funds on shopping, vacations, and trips to restaurants.” 

Marshall was arrested and charged last June.

“Miles Burton Marshall scammed his clients out of their life savings and used their hard-earned money to fuel a classic Ponzi scheme,” said Attorney General James in the statement.

The insurance agent pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the second degree, securities fraud under the Martin Act, and scheme to defraud in the first degree, and will be sentenced in June to four to 12 years in prison. 

Marshall’s scheme began in the 1990s. The New York Attorney General’s office started investigating Marshall in March 2023. A month later, he declared bankruptcy.

According to the New York Attorney General’s office, Marshall also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from his investors on personal expenditures, including travel purchases at American Airlines, Priceline, and United Airlines, at retail and online stores such as Amazon, Lululemon, and Target, and at grocery stores, restaurants, and yoga studios.

To further his scheme, Marshall directed his staff to generate fake “Transaction Summaries” for investors, falsely representing their account balances and the interest they purportedly earned, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.

Marshall’s investors relied on these false statements, believing they were earning a steady income, and continued to invest. As a result of Marshall’s investment scheme, many investors lost their life savings.

The New York investigation revealed that by 2016, Marshall’s total liabilities exceeded his assets by over $40 million.