Four-time convict Gregg Brie was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison on Nov. 15 for embezzling $640,000 from neighbors who poured money into phony investment schemes, including a man with paraplegia who was conned out of his savings.
“The nature and circumstances of this offense are quite shocking,” assistant federal prosecutors James McMahon and Shiva H. Logarajah argued in a sentencing memorandum submitted to the judge.
“Victim 1 is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair,” the memo states. “He took advantage of victim 1’s vulnerabilities and systematically took almost everything victim 1 had, leaving him to live off of disability benefits. When victim 1 attempted to recover his money, the defendant threatened to kill the wheelchair-bound man … in an effort to forestall discovery of his crime.”
Brie, 54, of White Plains, was arrested in October 2020 on fraud charges. He pleaded guilty this past June.
He had persuaded victim 1, his neighbor in a White Plains condominium, to invest more than $480,000 in Alaska Air Group Inc.
Brie told his neighbor that he had opened brokerage accounts for him, and he later boasted that the investment had increased in value to $8 million. But when the neighbor asked for his money, Brie said the accounts were frozen because stockbrokers had done something “sketchy.”
There were no brokerage accounts, according to court records. Brie had conned his neighbor.
But the neighbor helped bring down Brie. He recorded their conversations, including three in which Brie threatened to murder him if he contacted his brokerage accounts representatives.
In another scheme, Brie persuaded two people to loan him more than $127,000 for making commodes and distributing them in Uganda.
Brie lived lavishly, according to court records, spending $442,511 on credit card charges, taking $334,839 in ATM withdrawals and checks, leasing a Mercedes Benz for $73,605 and paying rent for his girlfriend’s apartment.
Brie was convicted in 1997 of grand larceny; 2008 for swindling $2.13 million from 26 people in Rockland County; and 2009 for stealing $205,000 from Smith Barney financial services in Purchase. He has spent close to six years in jail.
Brie had a difficult childhood, court-appointed defense attorney Benjamin Gold says in a sentencing memo. His father beat Brie and his mother. His parents divorced when he was 5 or 6 years old.
But as an adult, Brie became well-known for acts of kindness. He distributed air conditioners to senior citizens during a heat wave, gave away hearing aids to needy people, paid for a car service for an individual who needed help getting to New York City for cancer treatment, bought an Xbox for a 12-year-old boy who had been the victim of a scam and has taken care of his ailing mother.
He has received several awards and commendations for good deeds, including recognitions by the Rockland County sheriff and the district attorney.
Brie understands, however, that he hurt people.
“These misdeeds were active decisions made by a thoughtless and selfish man. A disgusting criminal who grossly and with conscious aforethought destroyed the lives [of others],” Brie wrote in a letter that Gold cites in his sentencing memo. “I pilfered their financial safety. I perverted their love of friendship and trust … I have no one to blame.”
“I pray his sentencing will allow me to see him again, Brie’s mother, Madeline, 78, pleaded to the court.
Gold recommended four years of imprisonment as sufficient punishment for Brie’s misdeeds.
The prosecutors recommended a prison term within the federal sentencing guidelines of 51 to 63 months, to “send a strong message of deterrence to this recidivist con man.”
U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel sentenced Brie to the full 63 months, plus three years of supervised release and restitution of $642,333.
