A former Massachusetts investment advisor and accountant who recently was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for robbing clients of more than $4.3 million has agreed to a bar from the industry, the SEC announced.
Steven Xigoros, 55, of Lowell, Mass., was indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2021 and pleaded guilty in October to two counts of wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of filing a false tax return. He was sentenced on Feb. 23 by Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton of U.S. District Court of the District of Massachusetts in Boston.
Prosecutors said between 2015 and 2021, Xigoros convinced clients, many of whom belonged to his close-knit Greek community, to allow him to invest their money in various investments and to purchase securities. He also induced them to lend him money for purported business ventures.
But none of the money was used as promised. Prosecutors said Xigoros used the clients’ money for his own expenses, including to make payments against his gambling debts and paying off other victims whose money he had stolen.
He covered up his fraud with a series of bogus statements that showed investments in various stock and bond funds that did not really exist, and when he would repay it, prosecutors said.
In total, he stole more than $4.3 million from his clients, which included wiping out the more than $1.3 million life savings of one elderly couple, who gave him the money to make investments on their behalf, prosecutors said. Xigoros also failed to report the misappropriated funds as income to the Internal Revenue Service and owed the agency about $1.16 million.
Prosecutors said while on pre-trial release, Xigoros was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport in September 2021 while attempting to board a flight to Greece to escape prosecution.
In addition to his sentence of 109 months in prison, Xigoros was ordered to serve two years of supervised release, and to pay $4,754,184 in restitution to individual victims and the IRS and forfeiture in the amount of $4,321,106.