Vernon Hills Man Sentenced To 5 Years For Swindling Investors

CHICAGO, IL — A Vernon Hills man was sentenced to five years in federal prison Monday for cheating several clients of more than $1.4 million dollars, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Illinois. According to a release from U.S. Northern District officials, some of 50-year-old Richard K. Booy's clients were elderly and had pledged their retirement savings. According to officials, Booy, the founder of Principal Financial Strategies LLC and Safe Financial Strategies Inc., carried out his fraud scheme from 2012 to 2016, and promised no-risk investments and guaranteed returns to persuade at least 15 clients to hand over more than $1.4 million.

However, officials reported Booy didn't actually have a relationship with the firm and wasn't authorized to invest client funds, despite claiming to be affiliated with it. Booy even continued his scheme even after the firm obtained a temporary restraining order against him that led to a court-authorized seizure of his computer and other evidence from his home, officials said.

After pleading guilty last year to one county of mail fraud, Booy was sentenced Monday to a 60-month prison sentence by U.S. District Judge Gary Feirnerman in federal court in Chicago, officials said.

Booy reportedly used the victims' money on his own expenses instead of investing the money as promised, for a fitness club membership, health insurance, and to make Ponzi-type payments to earlier investors, officials said.

According to a release, Most of Booy’s victims were elderly, and some entrusted him with their entire life savings, adding that the victims included a Chicago pastor, a retired government worker, a retired painter, and an individual who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease.

“Defendant committed much of this egregious conduct while sitting in his victims’ homes and in their places of worship,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew S. Ebert argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum, according to a release. “While face-to-face repeatedly with his victims, Booy brazenly made his pitch knowing that his actual purpose was to obtain and then devour his victims’ savings, pensions, and income.”

The sentence was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Craig Goldberg, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago; Jeffrey A. Monhart, Regional Director of the Chicago Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration; and Tanya Solov, Director of the Illinois Securities Department of the Illinois Secretary of State.