A former registered rep faces 20 years in jail for defrauding households of deceased army servicemembers, convincing them to put money into corporations he labored for whereas pocketing greater than $1 million in commissions within the course of.
New Jersey-based rep Caz Craffy pleaded responsible in federal court docket this week to 6 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and false statements in a mortgage software and to a federal company.
His victims included a number of Gold Star households who misplaced their relations throughout their army service, based on James Dennehy, the FBI particular agent answerable for the Newark subject workplace.
“Gold Star households are given a title nobody would select as a result of it means they’ve paid the final word sacrifice for this nation,” Dennehy stated. “Craffy took benefit of his place and defrauded households already going by means of an amazing quantity of struggling.”
Craffy labored as an Military civilian worker at Joint Base-McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey as a monetary counselor within the U.S. Military’s Survivor Outreach Providers, part of the Casualty Help Workplace. In response to court docket data, the workplace gives long-term assist for households of fallen servicemembers.
Craffy was additionally a serious within the Military Reserves however concurrently labored for 2 monetary corporations in the course of the interval in query, based on his BrokerCheck profile.
Between 2017 and 2021, he labored for Newbridge Securities earlier than registering with Monmouth Capital Administration for one 12 months (although the corporations aren’t named in court docket paperwork). FINRA barred Monmouth Capital Administration from the trade final June for violating Regulation Greatest’s Curiosity’s Care Obligation and for allegedly making false statements on its Kind CRS.
Nonetheless, Craffy didn’t inform the Military he additionally labored for these monetary corporations.
When an active-duty servicemember dies, that particular person’s army department will present survivor advantages to their Gold Star household, together with a $100,000 cost from the U.S. army inside two weeks of their demise, in addition to as much as $400,000 in life insurance coverage advantages within the following months.
The Military administers the advantages by means of the Casualty Help Workplace, with a monetary counselor like Craffy assigned to assist Gold Star households navigate the knowledge and make knowledgeable selections on survivor advantages, faculty saving plans and well being care, amongst different issues.
However beginning in 2018, Craffy got down to enrich himself by “misrepresenting the scope of his obligations” as a monetary counselor by getting households to speculate their advantages in brokerage accounts at Newbridge and Monmouth.
In some circumstances, the Military would assign Craffy to work with households. Craffy would additionally find victims by accessing inner army databases to seek out households of recently-deceased servicemembers.
Although the Military didn’t authorize Craffy to make funding suggestions, he urged households to speculate their advantages in accounts on the corporations the place he labored with out telling the households that he labored for these corporations (and did so with out the Military’s information). He additionally didn’t inform them he’d make commissions on trades made with the funds they invested.
The Justice Division discovered that Craffy triggered about 29 people to switch about $9.9 million in survivor advantages to accounts on the two corporations the place Craffy labored.
Craffy would encourage the households to open funding accounts and lie about their web price and that they most popular an “aggressive” funding technique, which led to decrease oversight from the monetary corporations.
Craffy benefitted from commissions on trades, even on the expense of the households’ funds; in a single instance in January 2022, Craffy spent about $287,000 of 1 household’s cash (greater than half their funding) on inventory, promoting it 9 days later at considerably decrease costs. The Gold Star household misplaced about $49,000 on the trades, however Craffy pocketed $8,900 in commissions.
Between Might 2018 and November 2022, the Gold Star households misplaced greater than $3.7 million, whereas Craffy earned greater than $1.4 million in commissions, based on the Justice Division.
FINRA completely barred Craffy from the trade, and the Securities and Change Fee has pending prices in opposition to him. Along with the jail sentence, he faces fines with a most of $5 million or twice the achieve and lack of the crime (whichever is bigger).
Craffy is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 21.
