A former Westport wealth management advisor today was sentenced to 41 months in prison for stealing more than $1.2 million from an elderly Weston client.
Robert Tricarico: sentenced to 41 months. LinkedIn photo
Robert N. Tricarico, 60, of Milford and formerly of Darien, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 41 months of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, said Deidre M. Daly, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut.
Until April 2015, Tricarico, a registered securities broker, was associated with RNT Wealth Management at 181 Post Road West, prosecutors said. His LinkedIn profile said from 1992 to 2009 he had worked in Westport for Wells Fargo, Smith Barney, and Merrill Lynch.
A U.S. Attorney’s Office release said he had previously worked for or been associated with firms that included Northstar Wealth Partners, LPL Financial, and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network.
According to court documents and statements made in court, from January 2010 to June 2013, Tricarico acted as a financial advisor for an elderly and infirm victim who had substantial assets.
Published reports identified her as Emily Anderson of Weston, who died in October 2013 at age 76. Her estate sued Tricarico and there was a subsequent settlement, the reports said.
Tricarico misappropriated more than $1.1 million from the victim by writing numerous checks to himself or for his benefit without the victim’s authorization, prosecutors said.
He also liquidated a coin collection belonging to the victim, and he misappropriated checks made payable to the victim, using the stolen funds to make personal expenditures, they said.
Tricarico also defrauded two additional victims of $20,000 by falsely representing to them that he would use their investments for a business venture and guaranteed a rate of return, the prosecutors said. In fact, he used the victims’ funds for his own personal use.
Tricarico was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,220,763.90. He had pleaded guilty on June 16 to one count of wire fraud. Freed on bond, he was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service to begin serving his sentence, a news release said.
The matter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of the Greenwich Police Department and Connecticut Department of Banking, it said. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David T. Huang.
