A Yonkers investment adviser who embezzled more than $5.4 million from family and friends during a 14-years-long criminal spree has pleaded guilty to fraud.
Joseph J. D’Ambrosio, 66, surrendered on July 17 and was arraigned in Manhattan federal court. Simultaneously, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit in federal court accusing him of violating the Investment Advisers Act.
D’Ambrosio “orchestrated an investment fraud though Hereford Holdings LLC,” the SEC complaint states, then “concealed his fraud by providing Hereford investors false statements about the performance and value of their investments.”
D’Ambrosio established Hereford in 1997 ostensibly as a Bronxville company, apparently basing the name on the street he lives on in the Lawrence Park neighborhood of Yonkers, near Bronxville.
Beginning in 1998, he raised millions of dollars from 19 investors, including himself, his children’s trust funds, his wife and her parents and her aunt, and a best friend from childhood.
D’Ambrosio made all of the decisions, according to the SEC. He pledged to invest the Hereford funds in equities, and he charged no management fees.
Neither D’Ambrosio nor Hereford were registered with the SEC.
In 2010, about 12 years after Hereford was formed, D’Ambrosio began embezzling funds, according to the SEC complaint, to pay for his mortgage, real estate taxes, travel, cars, and food.
“By December 2024, D’Ambrosio had drained Hereford of virtually all its money.”
He concealed Hereford’s dissipation for years by creating false reports. He issued tax returns, for instance, showing non-existent investment returns. He used new investor funds to pay earlier investors. He took more than $5.4 million for himself and recorded the withdrawals as loans.
In May 2016, after an investor put more money into Hereford, D’Ambrosio wrote that he would put the funds to work. “I feel very good about the way it’s been going so far this year,” he stated. “My research pipeline is full of good ideas. I will give you the usual mid-year update in a couple of months.”
In fact, the SEC says, D’Ambrosio did not put the investor’s funds to work and he had already taken most of Hereford’s money for himself. A month after boasting of his good ideas, Hereford had about $150 in a bank account and $43,000 in a hedge fund.
In 2016, he reported nearly $2.7 million in assets to an investor. In 2024, the same investor was told that the Hereford Holdings account at the end of 2023 totaled $8.2 million, when Hereford had less than $1,000.
The SEC says D’Ambrosio convinced at least one investor in 2023 to refrain from redeeming his investment. But by late last year, investors were demanding about $2 million in redemptions.
On Dec. 23, D’Ambrosio confessed to the SEC and law enforcement and he began cooperating with their investigations. On Dec. 26 he notified investors by email that he was unable to process redemptions and that he was “working collaboratively with relevant authorities.”
As of Dec. 31, Hereford had $325 in a bank account.
The SEC is demanding that D’Ambrosio disgorge his ill-gotten gains and pay a civil penalty. In the criminal case, he struck a plea agreement in which he agreed to forfeit $5,031,865.
Other than his house in Yonkers, valued at about $2.6 million by an online real estate database, it is unclear how D’Ambrosio can pay back investors. He was represented in the criminal arraignment by a public defender, and no defense attorney is listed yet in the SEC civil case.
D’Ambrosio is scheduled for sentencing in the criminal case on Jan. 6, 2026.
