Broker charged with swindling $750K from elderly investors

A Massachusetts-based registered rep for a MassMutual subsidiary was charged with wire fraud after allegedly swindling two elderly investors. Ryan Nestor of Marblehead, Mass., a representative with MML Investors Services Inc., was charged with two counts of wire fraud, following a probe by the FBI’s Boston Field Office. The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. is based in Springfield. In 2007, Mr. Nestor was a financial representative on a brokerage account belonging to an elderly woman from Martha’s Vineyard in that state. According to the complaint, in April 2007 he forged the investor’s name on a wire authorization form and siphoned away $170,000 into a bank account that was maintained by AOB Commerce Inc., an Arcadia, Calif.-based company that claimed to make loans to companies in Asia. In May of that year, Mr. Nestor also allegedly took another $590,000 from another elderly woman’s cash account, which was owned by her irrevocable life insurance trust. He then forged that investor’s name on a wire transfer and sent the money to a bank account held by AOB. Around June 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued AOB, alleging that it was in a fraud scheme that had raised more than $45 million from investors through an unregistered offering and sale of promissory notes that were supposed to pay off a guaranteed 5.5% interest rate each month. In fact, AOB was paying clients their interest using principal dollars that were contributed by other investors. If convicted, Mr. Nestor faces up to 30 years in prison, plus five years of supervised release, as well as a $1 million fine on each charge.