Police in Carrollton, Texas, have charged a financial advisor, a recently registered broker, with the shooting death of a 62-year-old client, in relation to a Ponzi scheme in which the advisor allegedly bilked multiple people out of close to $2 million.
Police charged Keith T. Ashley, 48, of Allen, Texas, with murder for the shooting death of James Seegan of Carrollton, and said he staged the death to make it appear as a suicide. Police said Seegan’s wife found her husband dead from a gunshot wound to the head on February 19, along with a typed note indicating that he had killed himself.
But police said over the course of a nine-month investigation, they found evidence that Ashley incapacitated and then murdered Seegan to gain control of his finances. Ashley, police said, was a friend and financial advisor to Seegan and visited Seegan’s home periodically. Police said the investigation with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office also uncovered several other victims of a Ponzi scheme Ashley orchestrated.
According to BrokerCheck, Ashley was employed with Parkland Securities in Allen, Texas, from February 2009 to October 2020, when he was dismissed. The firm at the time said it, “has reason to believe that the representative engaged in undisclosed outside business activities and also failed to provide the firm with prior notice of private securities transactions involving his privately held company.”
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in addition to the note left next to Seegan’s body, detectives also found footage on the victim’s phone from a security system showing Ashley arriving at Seegan’s home at 9:31 a.m. on February 19, with an “unknown loud noise” activating the camera inside the garage about 45 minutes later. The home security system showed Ashley leaving about six minutes later and returning a few minutes after that, the newspaper writes.
The paper said detectives later found that a test gunshot from the exact model handgun found in Seegan’s hand caused the garage camera to activate. It is unclear whether police obtained footage from the garage camera recording. Further, the paper said a drug screen test found the anesthetic agent Etomidate in Seegan’s system at the time of his death. The drug renders a patient unconscious almost instantly when injected, according to the newspaper. Detectives, meanwhile, found that Ashley also was a registered nurse working for City Hospital in White Rock, Texas, the newspaper writes.
The Star-Telegram also noted that Ashley told detectives that as Seegan’s advisor, he only earned money on two life insurance policies he sold to Seegan. But the detectives found that Seegan had transferred around $750,000 during the past five years to KBKK, a business Ashley owned.
One of the life insurance policies, meanwhile, was worth $2 million—and on January 24, the beneficiary on that policy was changed from Seegan’s wife to Seegan’s trust, whose funds Ashley had direct access to, the Star-Telegram said.
Authorities took Ashley into custody near his home on November 13 on related charges of wire fraud. Police said he was temporarily jailed in the Carrollton city jail awaiting a federal court appearance on November 17.