A Chicago-based investment advisor was sentenced to more than three years in prison last week for defrauding numerous clients of more than $3 million. His clients included a man who’d won a sizable civil settlement after being wrongfully convicted of murder in Illinois in the 1990s.
For more than a decade, Marcus Boggs worked as an investment advisor with Merrill Lynch. Beginning in 2018, Merrill and its parent bank, Bank of America, launched an investigation focused on unauthorized transactions from Boggs’ clients’ accounts into Boggs' credit cards, according to the original complaint filed in 2019.
While telling clients he’d used their funds to buy and sell securities, in reality Boggs transferred their funds into his own accounts to pay for personal expenses, including vacations, dinners at restaurants and the leases on numerous Chicago apartments, as well as the mortgage on his residence.
“(The) defendant had a personal relationship with his clients and knew what they hoped to achieve with their life savings and retirement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Mitchell wrote in Boggs’ sentencing memorandum. “But that didn’t stop him from stealing their hard-earned money.”
According to the DOJ’s indictment, Boggs stole more than $3 million from eight clients.
One of these clients was Shainne Sharp, named as “Victim A” in the indictment, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Sharp was one of five men arrested and convicted for the 1991 rape and murder of 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews, in Dixmoor, Ill., who disappeared after leaving her grandmother’s home. She was later found dead from a single gunshot wound, according to the Sun-Times.
Sharp, along with Jonathan Barr, James Harden, Robert Taylor and Robert Lee Veal, were all between 14 and 16 years old when arrested for the murder; the group subsequently became known as the “Dixmoor Five.” In interviews without parents or guardians, several of the arrested teens confessed. The teens subsequently argued they’d been physically abused and threatened during these interrogations, that Dixmoor cops intended to frame them for the crime, and that authorities withheld key evidence from the defense.
Decades later, DNA evidence indicated convicted sex offender Willie Randolph in the crime, and the Dixmoor Five’s convictions were overturned in November 2011. Several years later, the five men settled with the state of Illinois for $40 million, the largest wrongful conviction settlement in that state’s history.
Sharp received about $5 million out of the settlement, and then partnered with Boggs to manage and invest those funds, according to the DOJ.
“According to Victim A, he understood that Boggs would manage his funds to ensure Victim A had enough funds to sustain him for the rest of his life” the criminal complaint against Boggs read.
Boggs and Sharp periodically met to discuss his investments, with Boggs claiming that those investments were “performing well,” according to the complaint. Boggs apparently socialized with both Sharp and his wife, with Sharp describing him as “very charming.”
But in May 2018, Boggs contacted Sharp to tell him that the balance in his accounts was gone and they were being closed, with Boggs claiming Sharp had spent all of the money; Boggs questioned whether he’d spend the entirety of his settlement funding but trusted Boggs; he subsequently “hit rock bottom” after believing he’d lost all of the settlement, according to the complaint.
After being contacted in the course of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America’s investigation, Sharp relayed that he’d never given Boggs approval to withdraw funds for his own benefit, saying he hadn’t authorized Boggs to make about $815,000 in payments to an American Express credit card account for Boggs. In fact, Sharp argued (and American Express confirmed) that he didn’t even have an AmEx credit card during the period in question, according to the complaint.
Jonathan Barr, one of the other five men falsely convicted of murder, received about $8 million from Illinois’ wrongful conviction settlement, and worked with Oliver Kupe, a financial advisor and co-founder of A&O Advisors, who later co-founded Aurélien Capital Partners, to manage the settlement money. In an interview with WealthManagement.com last year, Kupe said one of the biggest services he provided as an advisor for an exoneree like Barr is to be a "buffer" between them and friends, family members, and "hangers-on" who may show up with hopes for loans or investment opportunities.
“We had to play a lot of defense,” Kupe said about his work with Barr, and said that building trust with individuals who’d been lied to and damaged by the criminal justice system could be a difficult process.
Boggs’ other victims included someone he met through work colleagues in 2007 and an unnamed woman who Boggs claimed to be able to help plan her retirement, as well as a man whose daughter attended college with Boggs, according to the complaint.
Boggs was fired by Merrill Lynch in December 2018 after the internal investigation determined that he’d stolen clients’ funds and made unauthorized transactions with them, according to spokesperson Bill Halldin.
“We notified the appropriate authorities and have cooperated with their investigations,” he said. “Consistent with our policy, Merrill Lynch notified affected clients and has reimbursed them.”
According to the Sun-Times, a Merrill Lynch spokesperson confirmed that all victims had been compensated and that Boggs had been fired in 2018. The DOJ confirmed that in addition to Boggs’ 36-month prison sentence, he must pay Merrill back more than $3.08 million the firm paid out in restitution.