SEC orders fraudster Vania May Bell to appear at hearing

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered imprisoned fraudster Vania May Bell to answer charges in an administrative hearing on whether civil and criminal allegations against her are true and, if so, what can be done.

Bell, 58, pled guilty last year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for her role in a $11.4 million Ponzi scheme at Executive Compensation Planners Inc., a financial planning firm operated by her father, Hector May, in New City, Rockland County.

A federal judge in White Plains sentenced Bell to nearly seven years in prison and ordered her to forfeit $589,942 in salary and benefits and to pay, with her father, $8 million in restitution to the victims.

She is incarcerated at the low-to-medium security Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, with a release date of September 2028.

Bell worked at the family firm from 1993 to 2018 and held positions as the comptroller and chief compliance officer.

She and her father persuaded clients to move investments from outside brokerage accounts to ECP accounts, according to court records, claiming that they had lower fees.

Instead, they siphoned off client funds to pay for business and personal expenses, such as jewelry and furs and country club dues.

Bell created fake account statements to make it appear as if the investment portfolios were strong, according to court records, and she helped recruit new victims. When clients asked to redeem their bonds, father and daughter used their stolen funds to pay the investors, in classic Ponzi-like manner, and keep the fraud going undetected.

In 2018, May pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11.5 million in ill-gotten gains and pay $8 million in restitution. Now 82, he is imprisoned at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary – Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, with a release date of August 2029.

When Bell was sentenced last October, her attorneys argued that she was a victim of manipulations by her father. If not for him, they said, she would never have become involved in the criminal scheme.

Prosecutors argued that she was ruthless and “seemingly sociopathic,” for stealing retirement savings from friends, relatives, blue collar workers and the elderly for 16 years.

Now, the SEC says, it is in the public interest to determine whether the criminal charges to which she pled guilty, as well as civil charges brought by the SEC for misappropriation of $7.9 million from at least 15 clients, are true and “what, if any, remedial action is appropriate.”