An upstate New York investment advisor has been sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $8.2 million in restitution to clients for stealing their money and using some of it to buy a Vermont condominium and liquor, according to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York Richard S. Hartunian.
Scott Valente, 58, of East Greenbush, N.Y., was convicted in May of securities fraud, mail fraud and obstructing and impeding the internal revenue laws. He was sentenced in federal court in Albany, N.Y., on November 20.
Valente, working out of Albany, Schenectady and Warwick, N.Y., operated an investment fraud scheme from 2010 to 2014, through which he received $10.6 million from 100 investors, mostly in upstate New York. He told investors he was earning between 36 percent and 45 percent in annual investment returns when in fact he was losing money.
The scheme operated through his investment company, The ELIV Group LLC. Valente also took $2.2 million in unauthorized management fees, which he used for credit card payments, to buy real estate and for home improvements, jewelry and liquor, Hartunian says. He told at least 30 of the clients that he was authorized to manage IRA accounts when he was not.
The SEC, in a separate action in 2014, obtained a cease and desist order against Valente and an order to freeze his assets.
“What Scott Valente did was terrible, both in terms of the financial ruin he caused and the emotional anguish he inflicted on his victims,” Hartunian says. “He stole several million dollars, improperly invested millions more, and lied to people who put their trust in him and gave him their life savings.”