Wilton Man Sentenced in $6 Million Ponzi Scheme

WILTON, CT --- Steven Simmons, 49, was sentenced Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to 37 months in prison for misappropriating nearly $2 million dollars from over $6 million he collected for a hedge fund between 2013 and January 2017. He used $700,000 of the misappropriated funds to buy a house in Wilton.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “Steven Simmons lied to investors about how their money would be used and what returns they could expect. He used investor funds for his own personal use – including the purchase of a house – and provided other investor funds for use in paying back earlier investors. Now Simmons has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for his crimes.”

Among other false and misleading statements, Simmons told one investor, a single mother of three children whose source of funds was an alimony payment received in a recent divorce, that her capital would be invested with the hedge fund in securities, her principal investment would be preserved and not commingled with other investor funds, and that she would receive a return of at least 15 percent on the investment. Contrary to these representations, Simmons stole much of the mother's investment, using $700,000 of that money within two months of her investment to buy a house in Wilton, and wiring $700,000 to the personal account of a co-conspirator.

Simmons told another investor, a family investment office, that its funds would be placed by the hedge fund with a highly successful group of portfolio managers and provided performance information for these portfolio managers. In truth, Simmons solicited those investment funds from the family investment office for the purpose of repaying an earlier investor in the hedge fund who had demanded the return of its investment. As part of the fraudulent scheme, Simmons also created and provided investors with false monthly statements.

Simmons was arrested January 27, 2017. He pled guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara C. Moses on October 30, 2017.

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