Sneaky schemes clinch imprisonment for former New Rochelle investment adviser

Former New Rochelle investment adviser Adam Belardino has been sentenced to federal prison for three-and-a-half years for scamming three clients.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas also ordered him on Feb. 9 to pay $501,500 in restitution to his victims and submit to three years of supervision after his release from prison.

Belardino, 36, was indicted last year and pled guilty to wire fraud and to making false statements to a government agency.

He used his ill-gotten gains to live far beyond his means, according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memorandum. He vacationed in St. Barts, dined at fine restaurants, drove an expensive car and made large cash withdrawals in his “insatiable desire to live a more luxurious lifestyle than he could afford through legal means.”

But Belardino’s attorney, Kerry Lawrence, said his conduct was not a product of greed or hubris, “and there are no luxury goods to show for it.

 

“Mr. Belardino made desperate and poor decisions while reeling from his father”™s suicide, which left him dealing with a substantial debt, an onslaught of new financial obligations, and sinking deeper into the depths of a long-time alcohol addiction.”

In 2019, Belardino was fired from Barnum Financial Group in Elmsford. He founded Maddox Group where, prosecutors say, he managed three complex schemes that required numerous acts of deception and the creation of false documents.

The first fraud was the embezzlement of funds from a close friend of his mother’s who had been his client at Barnum. He convinced the 64-year-old woman to transfer $314,000 from Barnum to Maddox.

He told the woman that the funds were moved from her conservative investments when in reality they were taken from an annuity that provided her monthly income.

Instead of investing the funds as he promised, Balardino used her money to pay operating expenses for his business,  credit card charges for travel and personal items, and $7,100 a month for a Central Park South apartment in Manhattan.

As the annuity got smaller, the woman’s monthly income was reduced. She was forced to move out of a rent-controlled apartment in New Rochelle and into her daughter’s home, according to the prosecution memo, because she could no longer afford the rent.

Now she avoids her friends, prosecutors said, because she is ashamed of her circumstances and is anxious and depressed. In a letter to the court the woman said she “lost the life that I loved.”

In the second scheme, Belardino applied for life insurance policies for a client and paid the premiums with the client’s funds, without the client’s knowledge or consent. Then he collected $94,500 in commissions on the transactions.

In the third deceit, he took $8,000 from employee paychecks that was supposed to be put into their 401K plans, and lied about his actions to the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Labor and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

In 2021, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority barred Belardino from serving as a financial adviser over his conduct at Barnum. Nine clients had made various allegations, such as the purchase of life insurance policies without their knowledge or consent.

Belardino told a probation official that he intends to continue working as a financial adviser.

“That plan is troubling,” the prosecution memo states, “given that the defendant has entered guilty pleas to the three felonies in this case; has been barred by FINRA; and was fired by his previous employer.”

Mr. Belardino has committed to sobriety,” his attorney said. “As a result of his consistent efforts to make his victims whole again, the total restitution owed to the individual victims and a substantial portion of the restitution owed to the insurance companies in this case has already been paid.”