Wilmette Lawyer Found Not Guilty Of Fraud, Forgery In Bench Trial

WHEATON, IL — A Wilmette lawyer and former financial adviser was found not guilty of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars by a DuPage County court. Prosecutors from the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan had alleged that 30 people, including a member of the 1985 Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears team, lost nearly $10 million they had put into the company the ex-asset manager ran until 2012.

Robert C. Acri, 61, was indicted in 2015 on 18 counts of securities fraud, mail fraud and forgery. A grand jury tacked on several more counts in January, and a judge Thursday found there was insufficient evidence to find him guilty on any of them.

One of his clients was former Bears lineman Keith Van Horne, and another was a resident of DuPage County, where the prosecutors from the attorney general's office chose to pursue charges. Van Horne was later dropped from the case. He has never publicly accused Acri of any wrongdoing and did not testify during this week's three-day bench trial before Judge Robert Miller in Wheaton.

After the state rested its case on Wednesday, the judge granted a motion for a finding of not guilty on five counts, and prosecutors dropped the other 17.

"The state had not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt, so we didn't even have to put our case on," Acri said. "We just basically said, 'Sorry, but the prosecutor has to show that we did all these things wrong.'"

Acri allegedly covered up conflicts of interests and misled his investors about the financial health of his company, Kenilworth Asset Management. In addition to his criminal indictment by a DuPage grand jury, he has also faced federal legal entanglements from clients and financial regulators. He has not been convicted of any criminal offenses.

According to financial regulators, Acri entered the securities industry in 1988. He founded Kenilworth in 2002 and controlled it for 10 years, according to an order from federal District Judge Manish Shah that found in favor of two of his investors who he had convinced to let him handle about $500,000.

At the firm's peak in 2008, it was managing more than $150 million in assets, Acri said. Since then, he's given up his license as a financial adviser and found work as a lawyer and consulting small businesses.

In March 2014, he accepted a settlement with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) permanently banning him from associating with any of its members. Then in June 2014, he was permanently banned from acting in any capacity with an investment company by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, which also ordered him to pay more than $100,000 in sanctions.

“Acri wasn’t honest with his clients and hid serious conflicts of interest from them while blatantly disregarding his fiduciary duty as an investment adviser,” said Robert Burson, senior associate regional director of the SEC’s Chicago office at the time.

The SEC also said Acri had misappropriated his clients' money, using it to repay other clients, toward a settlement in another client that had been brought against him and to pay someone "purportedly seek a loan."

Shah's 2017 opinion found Acri had lied to get his clients money. In one case, he had claimed the only obstacle to a planned Palatine assisted living facility in which he had convinced them to invest was a zoning permit, which was never actually submitted.

The alleged offenses occurred in 2011, when Acri raised money from Kenilworth clients for a Hammond, Indiana shopping mall redevelopment project without telling them it was actually the project of his personal friend – who has having "personal financial difficulties" and had already defaulted on a $500,000 loan, according to regulators.

Acri said many investors lost money on real estate following the financial crisis of 2008. He pointed out some of those who had been his clients received significant distribution payments over the years, and he was, himself, a major investor in some of the funds he was alleged to have defrauded.

"The funniest part was when the [prosecutor] said that I was trying to defraud myself and my own family – that they were going to prove that," Acri said. "And of course, they never did."

According to Judge Shah's opinion, Acri clearly convinced clients to invest in "financially doomed" enterprises and hid the facts about how he was set to receive a personal commission.

"Kenilworth's intention to deceive, manipulate, and defraud," the judge wrote, "is the only reasonable inference to be drawn from the undisputed facts surrounding the investment transaction."

The attorney general's office has not responded to a request for comment on the case.

"It all ended well, justice was served, thankfully," said Acri. "Cleared my name, cleared my reputation and now I can move forward."