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A former monetary advisor will spend life in jail for his position in a fraud that ended within the homicide of a consumer and trying to stage it as a suicide with a purpose to accumulate on a life insurance coverage coverage.
Keith Todd Ashley, a Texas-based former advisor, registered nurse and brewery proprietor, was convicted of wire, mail and financial institution fraud and “carrying a firearm in relation to against the law of violence” after a one-week jury trial final October. On Thursday, he was sentenced to life by U.S. District Decide Amos L. Mazzant. Dallas FBI Particular Agent in Cost Chad Yarbough stated he hoped the sentence would supply therapeutic for individuals who had been “without end impacted by the greed and deceit” of Ashley.
“Keith Ashley funded his lavish way of life and tried to rescue his failing enterprise by robbing his shoppers of economic safety, and when that wasn’t sufficient, he robbed considered one of his life,” Yarbough stated.
Ashley labored for about 18 years as a monetary advisor with Parkland Securities, in response to his BrokerCheck profile, although he was fired in 2020 and was later barred by FINRA after his conviction final yr.
Beginning in 2016, Ashley started stealing cash from shoppers by promising them he would make investments their funds in unit funding trusts with assured returns, in response to the DOJ indictment.
As an alternative, he handed the cash to different shoppers in a Ponzi-like style, used it to pay private payments and on line casino, bank card, mortgage, pupil mortgage and school tuition funds, and to maintain his flailing brewery enterprise afloat. By the top, Ashley had raised greater than $1.3 million in investor funds.
One of many affected shoppers (unnamed by the DOJ) was James Seegan, in response to the Fort Value Star-Telegram. Ashley started transferring cash out of Seegan’s private accounts into his personal, and altering the beneficiary of Seegan’s life insurance coverage coverage right into a belief Ashley managed.
On Feb. 19, 2020, Seegan was discovered useless in his residence of a gunshot wound, with a typed suicide observe indicating that Ashley would “assist” Seegan’s spouse after his loss of life, in response to the Star-Telegram.
However some issues didn’t add up for police, for instance a handgun was present in Seegan’s left hand, although his spouse informed authorities he was right-handed. Police then discovered video footage displaying Ashley had visited Seegan’s home that day, leaving after an hour and returning just a few minutes later.
Police believed Ashley had been the one particular person to go to the home till Seegan’s spouse discovered her husband’s physique later that day, in response to the Star-Telegram. Police ran drug checks on Seegan and realized he had an anesthetic agent in his system that can be utilized to rapidly knock somebody out.
Police finally decided Ashley killed Seegan and staged the suicide, in response to the Star-Telegram. However even after Seegan’s loss of life, Ashley tried to gather on the life insurance coverage coverage, going so far as to making an attempt to get a replica of Seegan’s post-mortem report, in response to the DOJ.
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