Sonya Camarco is an LPL Financial advisor based in Colorado Springs who stole approximately $2.8 million from her investors/clients. Camarco then used the stolen funds for personal expenses such as buying several homes.
If you are a victim, please call the Law Offices of Jeffrey Pederson at 1-866-817-0201 or 303-300-5022 for a free consultation on your rights. Jeffrey Pederson is an attorney licensed in Colorado who has helped hundreds of victims of financial advisor fraud and theft from across the country.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Sonya D. Camarco with five counts of fraud charges and has frozen her assets after SEC investigators said she used third-party checks and other means to forward client funds toward personal expenses like mortgage and credit card payments. Federal authorities filed charges against Comarco on or about August 27, 2017 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.
Camarco forged clients’ signatures on at least 129 first- and third-party checks, having them sent to a post office box and signing them over to an entity she controlled, an entity named “C Investments,” according to the SEC. Camarco bilked one widow victim for more than $1 million, investigators say.
On October 31, 2018, the State of Colorado sentenced Comarco to 20 years in prison. Of this sentence, 10 years was for theft and 10 years was for securities fraud.
LPL, her employer, detected the fraud in July 2017, when its special investigations unit probed a suspicious check drawn from a client’s account, per the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Camarco spent her clients’ money on credit card expenses, cars, real estate properties and taxes, the state’s investigators say.
These actions not only raise questions on the actions of Camarco, but also raises question as to the LPL supervisors charged with overseeing Camarco. Reasonable supervision is designed to detect and stop these types of actions. There are also money laundering issues on the part of those who helped Camarco commit her crimes.
Prior to working for LPL, Camarco had worked from both Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.
Jeffrey Pederson, from his offices in the Denver Tech Center, has handled cases in the past with similar facts and has experience in this type of advisor scheme where an advisor uses similar mechanisms to gain control of the investor’s funds. Consequently, he knows the documents to seek in discovery from defendants or to subpoena from non-defendants, and additional avenues of recovery to allow victims to increase their level of repayment.
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