Richard Piccoli Sentenced to 20 Years for $20M Ponzi Scheme

by Scott Wu | October 21, 2009 at 04:15 pm

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Richard Piccoli was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a Ponzi scheme of more than 20 million dollars. Richard Piccoli, at age 83, is expected to die in jail. He targeted the Catholic community and senior citizens; hundreds of people fell victim.

Piccoli took money from his clients but never invested as promised, said prosecutors. In January, the records and documents of exact amount of money lost will be presented to the judge. When Piccoli was arrested, the authorities seized $5 million dollars in bank accounts.

"Working on identifying the victims and nailing down exactly what their losses were as well as gathering up the assets to make a determination how much money each of the victims still be receiving," Wylegala said. "We were able to recover some funds at the time {Piccoli} was arrested. We seized bank accounts that had approximately $5 million in them, properties are being sold, and proceeds from that money and other assets will be available for restitution."

Lu Tracy, age 69, is one of the 15 victims who appeared in court. She called Piccoli a corrupt thug and she had no pity for him.

"There is two things I will never forget in my life,and that's 9-11 and you Richard Piccoli. He's nothing but a common terrorists. that's what he has done, he has terrorized too many individuals," said Tracy.

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