A former Ameriprise Financial advisor has been sentenced to five years in prison by a federal court in Texas, where she had earlier pled guilty to a scheme to bilk at least 10 clients out of $1.2 million.

Dusty Sternadel, 43, of Wichita Falls, tricked clients, most of whom were elderly, into writing checks from their personal bank accounts, falsely telling them the money would be used to correct deposit errors caused by Ameriprise. She eventually put these checks into her own bank accounts for personal use, prosecutors said. She was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division.

Sternadel worked at Ameriprise in the Wichita Falls office from 2018 to 2022; before that she worked at Morgan Stanley and Edward Jones. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority barred her from the industry in September 2022 when she refused to participate in an investigation over her firing by Ameriprise, which said in its termination notice that she had violated company policies on the misappropriation of client funds.

In response to a request for comment, Kathleen McClung, the vice president of public relations at Ameriprise, sent the following statement to Financial Advisor:

“Ms. Sternadel committed and concealed her illegal activity away from our firm. We have zero tolerance for her actions, and we immediately terminated her upon discovering what she had done. Importantly, we made clients whole and we actively partnered with law enforcement to bring Ms. Sternadel to justice.”

From September 2019 to July 2022, when she was fired, Sternadel tricked clients into sending her funds or checks under false pretenses and deposited these checks into a business bank account she controlled, prosecutors said. The company Sternadel controlled was called Nspire WF.

In one case, Sternadel transferred $26,916 from a client’s Ameriprise account into their personal checking account without telling them. She then told the client that it was an accidental transfer initiated by Ameriprise and that the client should cut a new check from the bank in the same amount to replace the Ameriprise money.

“On the basis of Sternadel’s recommendation, [the client] wrote a check for $26,916 and gave it to Sternadel, who deposited it into her own Nspire bank account," the government's complaint said. "Sternadel then used these funds for personal expenses.”

She hoodwinked at least 10 clients in this fashion, the government said, asking for checks ranging in size from $18,122 to $288,979, then putting them under her own control. The prosecutors said the victims were not only mostly elderly but that some of them were suffering from cognitive decline.

The checks were refunded to the victims by Ameriprise, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. The Dallas Field Division of the FBI helped with the case.

Sternadel was known as an advisor and business coach in Wichita Falls, and Nspire sponsored events for networking and workshops, especially for women in business. She entered a guilty plea in early January.