The Securities and Exchange Commission last month barred a veteran New York advisor, Clarice Crystal Saw, who allegedly defrauded $2.4 million from an elderly client while working at Cetera Investment Services, one of the broker-dealers in the giant network of Cetera Financial firms.
According to her BrokerCheck profile, Saw worked at 11 firms starting in 1996 through 2023. She was registered with Cetera Investment Services in Flushing, N.Y., from September 2021 to June 2022, according to BrokerCheck.
According to the SEC’s 2023 complaint against Saw, the advisor allegedly engaged in a fraud that ran from approximately December 2021 through March 2022.
She allegedly schemed to steal approximately $2.4 million from an elderly brokerage client.
“Saw carried out her scheme by obtaining by deception a power of attorney from the customer, falsifying internal records at the broker-dealer, liquidating all of the customer's securities holdings at the broker-dealer without the customer's authorization, and transferring all of the customer's holdings at the broker-dealer to Saw's own personal bank and brokerage accounts without the customer's authorization,” according to her BrokerCheck profile.
She used a portion of the stolen funds to pay for her personal expenses, including approximately $100,000 in car and mortgage payments and thousands of dollars of cash withdrawals, according to the BrokerCheck report. Saw also used additional misappropriated funds to purchase securities in her name in her personal brokerage accounts, according to her BrokerCheck profile.
Saw, who settled the charges with the SEC on September 21, could not be reached Thursday to comment. Saw, 60 years old, is a resident of Pleasantville, New York.
Elderly clients are among the most vulnerable and likely to be taken advantage of by a variety of fraud artists, including financial advisors or trusted consultants who go bad and prey upon clients.
Indeed, U.S. seniors lose $28.3 billion annually as a result of financial exploitation, according to a 2023 AARP study.
The AARP report showed that the vast majority of funds stolen from older Americans are purloined by someone they know.
Friends, family members or caregivers are responsible for $20.8 billion, or 72%, of the theft. Exploitation by strangers accounts for $8 billion, or 28%.
The AARP study also found that elderly victims tend to keep the crimes to themselves. Only $7.8 billion of the funds stolen are reported to authorities.
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