Ex-Broker Gets Up to 4 More Years in Jail for Scamming Mom

(Bloomberg) -- A former stockbroker convicted last week of defrauding his elderly mother, ex-girlfriends and a military veteran out of $360,000 will get as many as four years added to his sentence for an earlier $5.4 million securities fraud scheme, New York's Attorney General said.

Franklin Marone, 55, of Queens, New York, still owes more than $1.5 million in restitution to members of the ski patrol at a Catskill mountain resort in New York, whom he duped into investing in fake equity funds from 1998 to 2004, Barbara Underwood said. But instead of paying them back, Marone lied about his assets and cooked up a series of new schemes, she said.

“After previously being convicted of fraud, the defendant has shown zero remorse for his victims -- and a complete disregard for the law,” Underwood said in a statement Tuesday.

Marone, released from prison in 2010, was re-sentenced in June to as many as 25 years behind bars for failing to pay the remaining funds to the ski patrol victims, who he ripped off with fake account statements and elaborate emails about his investing prowess. He got the additional time Tuesday after pleading guilty to perjury and false filings in Greene County Court last week.

Marone was also sentenced to as long as four years in prison in Queens Supreme Court for defrauding several people including his 89-year-old mother, whom he impersonated in recorded phone calls with financial institutions in an attempt to steal over $50,000 from her account, the attorney general said. That sentence will run concurrently to the time he got in Greene County.

Marone, described by prosecutors as a charismatic predator, spent lavishly on upgrades to Jeep Wranglers, premium spa memberships for himself and his current girlfriend and a $4,000 cruise, rather than repaying the ski patrol victims, Underwood said. He also pawned $9,000 worth of property, according to the statement.

He filed bogus financial paperwork to hide his assets, Underwood said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, Paul Cox

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