Quincy Man Gets Four Years in Prison for $3.1 Million Scam

Editor’s Note: Information in this article is from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

A Quincy man will spend over four years in prison for a scheme to defraud $3.1 million from 65 individuals.

Marcellus Lopes Lee, 47, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He was also ordered Lee to pay restitution in the amount of $3,159,632 and to forfeit his Quincy home.

In August, Lee pleaded guilty to 16 counts of wire fraud and six counts of money laundering.

Lee owned and operated Taurus Global Markets, Ltd., an entity which Lee held out as a company that engaged in foreign currency trading on behalf of investors. Lee defrauded investors by convincing them to wire funds to TGM’s Belize bank account for the purpose of trading in the highly-risky forex market.

Lee, however, did not trade the investor money and instead used it for his personal expenses. Although TGM’s website claimed to have staff, management, and a computer network “distributed all across the world,” TGM had no employees and Lee operated it by himself, primarily from his home in Quincy. Lee also sent investors what purported to be account documents reflecting that their money was invested in the foreign currency trading market.

Eventually, most investors were told that most or all of their money had been lost in trading when, in reality, Lee had simply spent it.