Alleged husband and wife grifters Jeff and Wendy Richie were indicted Wednesday for fraud and embezzlement related to acts involving Vantage Benefits Administrators, the Dallas-based TPA subject of an FBI raid last year.
“Beginning in or about 2014 and continuing through 2017, [the Richies] engaged in a joint scheme and artifice to defraud, the object of which was to misappropriate retirement funds for which [Vantage Benefits Administrators] served as TPA,” according to court documents.
“During this period the defendants misappropriated approximately $14.5 million in funds maintained by over a [sic] 1,000 plan participants in at least 20 ERISA and Optional Retirement Plans,” the documents add.
The acts allegedly included distribution requests prepared by Wendy Richie, who used the name and identity of an employee, or purported employee of the plan sponsor.
The request would direct that the distribution be made by ACH transfer to a financial account that the employee had purportedly designated.
In fact, the designated account was one controlled by Vantage. The funds were then used for company expenses, including payroll.
Funds were also transferred to the Richie’s personal bank account and used to acquire assets and pay for expenses including remodeling work at their residence and a four-wheel drive tractor.
According to The Dallas Morning News, “Richie was sanctioned in 2008 by the Securities and Exchange Commission and barred from the investment business for three years ‘for conducting an unregistered and fraudulent offering’ of securities in the retirement-services company he was running at the time.”
Richie neither admitted nor denied the allegations in that case, the paper adds, and the agency waived a $4.3 million judgment based on his financial condition.
The firm, which billed itself as “professional fiduciary” was hit with a civil suit related to the latest allegations last January.
MBA Engineering, a Blaine, Minnesota-based plan sponsor, named Vantage, as well as the Richies, and alleges nefarious intent and actions related to the approximately $2,269,653.43 in retirement benefits missing from the plan.
“Defendants disguised their fraud for nearly a year by falsifying [p]lan participant account statements and participant accessible website information to make it appear that participant account balances were whole and accurate,” according to the suit. “All the while, [d]efendants systematically transferred millions of dollars in retirement benefits from the [p]lans to their own bank account, and for their own gain.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
