A Maryland advisor who pled guilty to bilking a now-deceased elderly client out of $1.4 million has been sentenced to 42 months in prison by a federal court.

Eddy Ray Blizzard, 45, of Havre de Grace, Md., was also sentenced to two years of supervised release in the case, whose twists involved a fake suicide attempt by Blizzard, the client's inability to read canceled checks due to illiteracy, and the client’s home being thrown into foreclose after Blizzard sapped all his funds.

Blizzard pled guilty in December to one count of bank fraud late after the government said he had spent years funneling money from the bank account of the client, whom Blizzard first worked with as a bank advisor at M&T Bank after the client started a relationship with the bank around 2003. Blizzard eventually told the client he was going out on his own as an independent advisor.

Blizzard did not leave M&T Bank and instead had the client meet with him in a car in Catonsville, Md., an hour away from the client's home. He also had the client turn over a number of signed checks with the amounts left blank.

“Blizzard,” the Department of Justice said in its release, “used these checks for personal purposes, and not for any benefit of [the client] R.M. On approximately 12 different instances, R.M. went to his local bank to withdraw cash and was told there was not enough money in the account. R.M. would then call Blizzard to let him know about the deficiency. Blizzard then told R.M. to wait a day or two and there would be funds in the account to withdraw. R.M. did not ask Blizzard why there were no funds in the account or how those funds were replenished.”

The client had also believed that Blizzard was paying his mortgage, according to the Department of Justice, and the home was put in foreclosure in the fall of 2019.

When the client saw canceled checks, he didn't know what they were for because he was illiterate and couldn't read them. He also couldn't understand an IRS letter informing him that Blizzard's withdrawals from his retirement accounts had cost him $63,000 in taxes.

Blizzard worked at M&T Bank from 2003 to 2014, according to his BrokerCheck page. After that he worked at SunTrust, which eventually sued Blizzard for breach of contract, first in an arbitration at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and later in a federal court where SunTrust tried to enforce the $118,070 judgment against him. Blizzard filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of 2020.

According to the government, the client had retired in 2003 after 40 years of service at a commercial air conditioning company, had a ninth-grade education and had declined supervisory positions at his company after not being able to read or write. He took a buyout and retired and hoped to invest his retirement savings for his grandchildren.

A government review of the client’s retirement accounts found that 242 distributions totaling $1.4 million had been made from 2013 to 2019; after taxes and fees were taken into account, $1 million ended up in the client’s bank account, which Blizzard then drew from.

“This review also revealed that from April 2016 to April 2019 Blizzard deposited approximately 112 checks drawn on R.M.’s account into various bank accounts … that were held by Blizzard jointly with his wife or individually," the DOJ said in its press release today. "These checks totaled approximately $848,000 and were written to Blizzard or Blizzard’s wife. A review of these checks showed that almost all had comments written on the memo section indicating various purposes such as payment of property taxes, construction, boat payments, and down payments for a new house.”

When the client attempted to reach Blizzard at his residence in Perry Hall, Md., to ask about missing funds, Blizzard eventually told the client and the client’s son that he had tried to commit suicide at his home in South Carolina and had been hospitalized. In his plea, the government, said, Blizzard admitted this wasn’t true.

The client died on March 20, 2020.