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Tag: Steve Salutric

  • BULLETIN: Steven Salutric, Illinois Man Accused By SEC Last Year Of Stealing From 96-Year-Old Nursing Home Patient With Dementia, Now Charged Criminally

    BULLETIN: Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois have charged Steven W. Salutric with wire fraud, the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said.

    Salutric, 53, of Carol Stream, initially was charged civilly by the SEC in January 2010, amid shocking allegations that, to keep his Ponzi and fraud scheme afloat, he stole $400,000 from a 96-year-old woman with dementia who resided in a nursing home.

    The U.S. Department of Labor later sued Salutric, alleging that he illegally withdrew “more than $1 million from five pension plan client accounts from 2005 through 2009” and “jeopardized the retirement security of many workers.”

    Fitzgerald’s office now says Salutric, who co-founded an investment-advisory firm known as Results One Financial LLC, “caused about 10 clients to lose more than $4.26 million.”

    Salutric’s scheme, which in part involved dipping into client’ custodial funds at Charles Schwab & Co Inc., operated between December 2002 and January 2010, prosecutors said.

    “Salutric allegedly fraudulently obtained more than $3 million from clients by preparing, forging clients’ signatures on, and faxing documents that falsely represented to Schwab that the clients wished to transfer funds from their Schwab accounts to bank accounts held by Salutric’s personal business associates and entities in which he had a financial interest,” prosecutors said. “Salutric allegedly used at least a portion of the clients’ funds to make Ponzi-type deposits to other clients’ accounts to conceal and prolong the scheme.”

  • SHOCKING: SEC Says Illinois Investment Adviser And Movie Producer Raided Account Of 96-Year-Old Nursing Home Patient With Dementia; Steve Salutric Ponzi Diverted $321,000 To His Church

    A federal judge has frozen the assets of Illinois investment adviser Steve Salutric in a Ponzi scheme case in which the allegations are shocking.

    Salutric, 51, a church treasurer who took a stab at the fim business and co-produced the 2005 movie “Madison” starring Jim Caviezel and Bruce Dern, raided the account of a 96-year-old woman last year to keep his Ponzi scheme going, according to a complaint filed today by the SEC.

    The woman lived in a nursing home and was suffering from dementia, the SEC said, adding that Salutric’s act toward her was “particularly egregious.”

    Salutric misappropriated more than $400,000 of the woman’s funds, the SEC said, identifying her only as “Client A.” Other client accounts also were raided.

    “Client A has no current memory, cannot retain information for more than 5 minutes, and resides in a nursing home,” the SEC said in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

    In recent weeks, fearing his fraud was about to be exposed, Salutric began to approach clients with offers to pay them “hush money,” the SEC said.

    “Client funds thus are apparently being used in effort to conceal Salutric’s previous misconduct and are being used in a Ponzi-like fashion as ‘hush’ money,” the SEC argued today to U.S. District Judge William J. Hibbler. “Unless emergency action is taken, Salutric may attempt to further dissipate client funds by paying clients with misappropriated funds in an effort to gain ‘cooperation’ from some of his defrauded clients.”

    Hibbler froze Salutric’s assets.

    Salutric, of Carol Stream, Ill., co-founded the investment advisory firm Results One Financial LLC, the SEC said. Results One, which has more than 1,000 clients and more than $160 million under management, was identified in the complaint as a “relevant party,” not a defendant in the case.

    Salutric is accused of misappropriating “at least” $1.8 million in clients’ funds by raiding their Charles Schwab accounts, and he “did not have discretionary authority to withdraw funds from client accounts at Schwab,” the SEC said.

    Among the allegations, which listed one shocking claim after another, were that Salutric forged signatures to gain access to the Schwab accounts and “transferred approximately $1.2 million of client funds to entities with apparent ties to Salutric,” the SEC said.

    Among the entities to which he directed misappropriated funds was his church, where Salutric is the treasurer and has signatory authority over the church’s bank accounts, the SEC said.

    The church received $321,000, the SEC said.

    A film-distribution company known as Celluloid Distribution LLC received $610,000, the SEC said.

    Meanwhile, a Yorkville, Ill., restaurant in which Salutric holds an ownership interest received “about $45,000,” the SEC said, and a now-shuttered restaurant in Carol Stream received $214,000.

    “This restaurant went out of business in 2009,” the SEC said. “One of Salutric’s clients is the agent for the restaurant’s corporate entity, and the owner is the brother-in-law of one of Salutric’s defrauded clients.”

    Clients who were fleeced were not aware of the transfers and did not approve them, the SEC said.

    At one point, Salutric spent down the account of the 96-year-client with dementia to the point that it less than $10,000. The SEC did not say precisely how much had been in the account, but noted the misappropriation exceeded $400,000.

    A $50,000 Ponzi payment was made to another fleeced investor from the elderly client’s account, the SEC said. Salutric lied to the client’s daughter in the summer of 2009 about the amount of money in the account and continued to steal from it after telling the lie, the SEC said.

    Salutric is listed as a co-producer of the hydroplane-racing movie “Madison,” which starred Caviezel and Dern. The movie had a limited run in 2005, after being completed in 2001 and sitting on the shelf for nearly four years prior to release.