A financial author and former Southport resident has pleaded guilty to securities fraud in federal court.
On May 7, Joseph A. Leonard, 44, was convicted of pocketing more than $2.5 million by selling fake stock certificates and certificates of deposit (CDs).
According to U.S. Attorney Thomas G. Walker, U.S. District Judge Earl Britt sentenced Leonard to more than 17 years in prison followed by three years supervised release. Britt ordered Leonard to pay just shy of $1 million in restitution.
Leonard was a financial adviser who owned and operated Leonard Capital Management and, more recently, Coastal Investment Advisers, which dissolved in August 2012 for failure to file an annual report.
Walker said investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed Leonard had forged fake stock certificates and fake CDs to people in the Wilmington area and other places and pocketed the money for himself.
In one scam, Leonard forged stock certificates for a company known as Proton Therapies USA without authorization of the CEO or board of directors, and sold them to 55 people. The forged stock certificates were purportedly worth $1.6 million.
Leonard conducted another scam where he sold fake CDs at a 4.05 -percent annual interest rate to 10 people while supplying the victims with fake monthly statements. The fake CDs totaled $996,000.
